To think most accidental pregnancies aren't really accidental?

[IAteAllTheTomatoes]

If someone really doesn't want to get pregnant they are there are so many ways to prevent it that it's rarely a real accident?

Contraception, vasectomies, morning after pill etc.

I know contraception fails but if someone really doesn't want a pregnancy, they can double up & just more than one method?

Is it a lie that people just tell themselves?

I agree. There are very few true 'accidents'
"it was an accident" is the line trotted out for anyone who knows they shouldn't be having a baby but wants one anyway and fuck the consequences🤷‍♀️

Contraception, used properly, has a very high success rate.

I probably should clarify.

I think there's a big difference between unplanned (as in if it happens its OK rather than actively trying to concieve) than accidental (it happened when you 100% didn't want it to & were taking stes to prevent it?)

I'm not trying to to goady & didn't see the first response before it was deleted. A friend is "accidentally" pregnant but has said it

It's a very happy accident. They weren't actively trying to prevent it so it's not an accident.

I was on the pill for the best part of 20 year, took it religiously and didn't get pregnant once.

For 3 years DH and I used condoms, again, no pregnancy.

It's not like we have sex one in a blue moon, it's fairly regular!

And we know we are both pretty fertile because when we decided to try for a baby I got pregnant the same month I came off the pill. I had several MCs but every time I got pregnant again right away, it became a bit of a joke that I would get pregnant from sharing DH bath water.

So yes, I'm always a little sceptical when people claim to have gotten pregnant on the pill or while using condoms. I think it genuinely does happen, but not as often as people make out.

I don’t think that people who aren’t using contraception properly are actively planning to get pregnant, but neither is a pregnancy where someone forgets a condom or doesn’t take a pill accidental, it’s dwn to being irresponsible with contraception.

It always amazes me how many people post about their waster new partners, how resentful they are of the kids and the ex and how horrible the new partner is but oh, how amazing that they’re already pregnant.

I read a statistic somewhere which stated that 99% of unplanned pregnancies are down to incorrect use of contraception.

Because we didn’t actually plan to get pregnant - however it also wasn’t an accident. We were just lax AF with contraception

We had an "accidental pregnancy". It wasn't planned for, we just weren't being that careful and I thought it would never happen to me. It was definitely not intentional and although we did eventually decide to continue on with the pregnancy, learned our lesson in terms of how easy it was to conceive for us and didn't get pregnant again until it was planned many many years later.

@TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl

Therefore it was planned. As funnily enough, unprotected sex equals pregnancy in a high proportion of cases

I know of two women who deliberately got pregnant, whilst their partner thought that they were on contraception. One faked she was on the pill claiming she never ever wanted children. Another said she medically couldn't have children.

Both cases were because they wanted a baby, and someone to pay their bills, they weren't in relationships, and approaching 40. Figured they'd just get pregnant, act surprised, and the man would stay out of obligation. They aren't even shy about admitting it. The one who faked being on the pill, is now a single mother, from birth. The one who faked she couldn't have children is a single mother, father left when child was 3 months. Both trash talk the father's for leaving them the child.

Both genuinely think they've been really clever, now getting their child support and child related benefits every month. Neither work. Children are school age.

Neither seems to give a shiny shit about the implications for the child. But it was never about the child, from day 1. Both thought a baby would mean they would become a kept woman, and if not, they'd have enough child support and benefits to live on anyway. I only know of this because both are close to member of my family, and I've had some interaction with them, and her directly. I think there are far more women like this than we think. It's awful.

My best friend, until she was 37, literally hated the idea of children. So did her partner. However she suddenly became broody. He still didn't want any. They split. She's now got a beautiful 2yr old with her new partner. That's what a decent woman does. Not stay with her original partner, lying that she hates the idea, having secretly come off the pill. Then the whole fake offence and "well you had sex with me, so you knew there was a chance." Yes you lied that there was a 1% chance, knowing it was a 30% chance. They wouldn't have been having sex at all if the women was telling the real truth about the zero contraception.

If someone tells me they are pregnant and it was an “accident” I assume they accidentally forgot to take the pill/morning after pill/got a bit drunk and put the condom on eventually/forgot it altogether. I’ve never probed that deep though but I’d think it was quite rare for a genuine contraception fail.

I used to feel the same OP, until it happened to me, aged 38 with a baby and a marriage going down the pan. On the pill, still breast feeding, did ONCE. Very briefly...

I was on the mini pill for years, and had only been with my partner for 5 months when I fell pregnant. I’m still mystified 5 years later as to how it happened, so she was certainly a surprise and not planned. there was a lot of back and forth about whether it was the right thing for us at the time as the relationship was so new. It does happen.

Well if you have PIV sex the possibility is always there…

@TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl

That makes zero sense.

Unprotected sex leads to pregnancy so if you’re not using protection you’re not trying to prevent it.

Saying a pregnancy is unplanned in those circumstances is ridiculous.

Guess in our case it could be seen as unplanned as never conceived in 11 years so thought we were okay and then..boom one time.

This is after having two IVF kids!

Well I know someone who was on the Pill and didn't know she was pregnant until she went into labour.
I'd say that was unplanned !

Some people can't double up. I can't take hormonal contraception and couldn't use a copper coil due to endo, so reliant on condoms. If it split and I got pregnant it certainly is an accident, I was taking a step to prevent it! If I was using the pull out method then sure, that's plain stupid.

I certainly wasn't going to get my tubes tied or ask my partners to have vasectomies as a childless 20 year olds, knowing I or they might want children eventually.

if so many "accidental" pregnancies were secretly planned, there wouldn't be thousands of abortions, would there

I'd your look at the statistics of contraceptive registry, there are failures even with 'perfect use'.

Even things like the implant have a failure rate (about 1 in 2000). A woman having her tubes tied - 1 in 200. These aren't things a woman can really influence after its done!

Things like the pill are obviously much higher, and the typical failure rate is much higher than perfect use. Lots of women don't realise you're things like antibiotics, or tummy bugs can affect the pill, and so even when taken reliably it sometimes fails. And obviously it sometimes just fails because it does.

We doubled up when we were 100% against having a baby (especially as abortion wouldn't be an option for me).

Lots dont realise that contraception only reduces the risk of pregnancy, rather than eliminating it.

Well, it all depends on how you define accident.
What about all the road accidents? Are they not accidents?
I define accident as not deliberate, so while there will obviously be a number of pregnancies where one person deceived the other and claimed an accident when actually was deliberate, there will be many more for whom it actually was an accident.
If we go back to the car analogy, is it an accident if a driver involved in a crash was distracted by a child let's say, or is it something foreseeable, because we all know that children are predictable and therefore the driver should have taken other precautions so as not to be distracted? You don't hear people say that we need two adults present while driving children otherwise it isn't an accident but a deliberate collision.

For all the contraceptive methods available, our bodies are designed to procreate through sex, so it's only natural that we as a species engage in this pleasurable activity.
We can say that nowadays there are methods to prevent pregnancy, and they are very efficient, but the biological norm is pregnancy so considerably more effort is required to not become pregnant than to become pregnant in fertile couples.

That is a very good point.

I took OP as meaning that there were a lot of accidental pregnancies in the sense that then continued to a child being born.

Hmm, I don’t necessarily agree with your interpretation of accident.

I have some fertility issues and it took over a year to conceive DD despite cycle tracking from day 1. So after she arrived we knew we didn’t want to have a second for at least 18m - 2y. DS was conceived from a single instance of DTD on day 8 of my cycle when DD was 12 months.

Was I using contraception? No, although I was tracking my cycles. Did I want to get pregnant at that stage? No, absolutely not. I wasn’t even back at work yet. Did we progress with the pregnancy? Yes, because we knew we wanted another, I couldn’t bring myself to abort and we knew that due to my issues there were no guarantees we’d conceive again. Am I glad we had him? Oh, absolutely x 10000.

It took a lot of time to get my head around it and, having battled to get pregnant before, I had some really mixed emotions about how it can simultaneously be so hard and so easy to get pregnant.

It depends on age - when a 15 year old gets pregnant, it's probably accidental. And of course there are LOTS of genuinely accidental pregnancies that nobody hears about because the woman ends the unplanned pregnancy.

But yes, when a woman in her 20s or 30s who has successfully controlled her own fertility for decades suddenly has an "accidental pregnancy" which she decides to keep, that was not accidental. In general grown women get pregnant and have babies when they are ready to do so.

This again?

I wasn’t looking to get pregnant. I used a condom, it broke. I took the MAP, it didn’t work. How was that not an accidental pregnancy? I had an abortion.

I’m so glad that women can now buy the MAP from chemists and have access to abortion pills.

The reality is that contraception fails and some of the more reliable, long term options aren’t a good fit for a significant percentage of women. Constant bleeding, wild mood swings and depression are some of the side effects of hormonal contraception.