To ask if you conceived whilst using withdrawal method, did you...

[mamaAJ]

Did you make a mistake, such as misjudging the timing? Or did you use the method perfectly to the best of your knowledge?

Interested to know first hand experiences please.

Personally the whole concept is a mistake, yes you can plan/time/take your temp etc but it only takes one speed to get there and boom pregnant 🤰

I used withdrawal/ awareness of my cycle for 10 years and then got pregnant the first month I meant to do it worked well for us.

Are you the person who posted recently about having withdrawal sex twice on your ovulation day? Withdrawal only works if you have a v regular cycle, you don't have sex around ovulation, and are lucky in that eg sickness or medication don't mess up your cycle. Not if you are having sex on ovulation day twice.

I have used the withdrawal method for 15 years with my partner. No pregnancies wanted or accidental. Just FYI.

I've used it on and off with various partners, combined with my own awareness of my cycle. I've only ever got pregnant when it was intended, and each it was the first month of trying so it's not as if I generally have low fertility!

I thought I was being ever so careful put still got pregnant so it didn’t work for me. In fact , for various reasons , I struggled with different methods of birth control so after my third unplanned pregnancy I was sterilised at the age of 28,

Thanks everyone who's commented, me and DP have used pullout method quite a few times since having our DS. It's been successful so far, always pulls out with good time. I just wondered other people's experiences because you constantly hear 'people who use withdrawal are called parents' etc. I've always wondered if they actually conceived because they didn't use the method correctly or if they were genuinely the unlucky 4%.

4% is one in 25 so not that low, and that's per year, not a lifetime stat.

But yes withdrawal is misrepresented as being a terrible method when in reality it's not a huge amount worse than condoms.

You won't get a good sense of the numbers by asking people though, because people tend to code information that supports their worldview as evidence, and information that goes against it as a meaningless anecdote.

I would guess it has a poor reputation because of how it's taught to be avoided in schools.

Worked well for us. When we wanted a baby we stopped using withdrawal and I was pregnant within three months.

May not suit everyone though

In DS's reception class of 30 there were 3 withdrawal babies. And those were just the parents I knew well enough that it had come up in conversation in the time I'd known them.

Obviously it works for some people who only use it properly at the right time in their tracked cycle - the question is what happens when it doesn't work? What are the consequences of a pregnancy?