To think a lot of accidental pregnancies are actually planned without their partner knowing?

[UptownFuckYouUp]

I hear of so many contraceptive failures, especially when the man is dragging his feet in regards to ttc, that it makes me wonder if they're not so accidental after all.

Lots of women worrying about their body clock, wanting a specific age gap between their DC, wanting a baby with a new partner etc

How common do we think it is? Has anyone done it or known anyone to?

Obviously there's always the chance of a man taking a condom off without the woman's knowledge/faking a vasectomy, but I think that is a lot less common.

Sidenote: I appreciate a lot of pregnancies ARE an accident, I'm just curious about those who say it was an accident when in fact there was one partner ttc without the other knowing

I got pregnant with an IUD. Doctor checked thag it was perfectly in place according to her "one of those things that sometimes happen". So yeah, that was fun.

I think most accidents are birthcontrol failure from users end. Condom hasn't been used all the way through and broke, implant/IUD not inserted correctly, pill taken wrong time, miscalculation of safe days, pulling put too late. There are women who trick men into having a baby but wouldn't think that is a significant percentage

I suppose we fall into this bracket. I had come off hormal contraceptives due to some unwanted side effects. We were using condoms for protection. With both my two pregnancies we were discussing kids/when to have them. I was ready but he wasn't quite so sure (mostly concerned about finaces).

Both times we had sex only once and he didn't put on a condom, I didn't make him. It resulted in 2 pregnancies. We are now in agreement we want no more and he has had a vasectomy.

My ‘surprise’ was only sort of a surprise - we’d been told we were unlikely to have a baby and accepted that. And absolutely thrilled that we won the one in a million chance baby lottery.

I know a woman who is considering a ‘whoops’ baby. She has openly talked about her desire for another child and her boyfriend is 100% against the idea. I hope he has enough sense not to leave contraception up to her.

I know a man who ‘accidentally’ got a woman pregnant. He says he thought he was sterile due to the drugs he was using at the time. Given that he is a health professional, I sincerely hope he is lying about that because I certainly wouldn’t trust his medical abilities if he genuinely believed that. As it is, I just don’t believe his ethics.

I reckon most ‘surprises’ are either just taking a risk with/out contraception or deliberate plan by one party.

I had mine young and a lot of people thought that they were accidents, but no, both planned and wanted by both parents.

We didn't want more than two and I didn't want another child by the time I married my second husband so we took precautions and it didn't happen.

I do know women whose husbands were dragging their feet around wanting children and who took matters into their own hands. For the most case it all worked out well, but for one woman it did ruin her marriage because it turns out that her husband wasn't dragging his feet, he was actively not wanting a child and was using condoms. Years later she admitted that she did trick him.

I had a positive pregnancy test on the implant this year. I have no idea how long I’d been pregnant as I’ve been bleeding all over the place since getting it in this year. the tests were negative a day later. It was a shock! But the implant has worked for me most of my adult life to be fair. I don’t quite know what to do about it now though.

Yes I agree

My husband wanted sex. We had sex. I said to him we (because I knew subconsciously saying you was not a good idea) would have to stop because I didn't want to get pregnant. He refused to stop.

Whether he planned to get me pregnant I don't know. He tried to get me to take the blame for it when we were splitting up 22 years later, so I know he knows he was responsible.

It's not always the woman's doing.

Yes, I think so. But if a man is happy to handball the responsibility of his own fertility to someone else, I haven't got much sympathy.

How did she manage it if he was using condoms?

We weren't 'trying' though as we just wanted to see what happened. We were living in a ring rented flat, going out loads, partying so the shock was how all thia needed to be sorted out for a proper 'grown up life' I can see what you mean about 'trying' but I associate that with planning it, it certainly wasn't a great plan it was an expression of our love for each other. We adored each other(obviously we both love each other still but early 40s) neither of us had felt love like that both emotionally and physically and I had lived with someone for 3 years prior to that. DH had had about 3 girlfriends prior to us getting together so it wasn't youthful naivety. Having a baby was more a metaphysical reflection of that love which is nothing to do with planning in our minds.

To be honest, I think there are far more "accidents" because one or both party has been lazy, than because one is trapping the other. They'll say it was unplanned because they weren't intending to have a baby, and they used condoms most of the time, and/or she usually took the pill, but weren't actually using any contraceptive method in the optimum effective way. True pill failures/condom breakages (followed by failure of MAP) are very rare; people being a bit casual and hoping for the best probably much more common.

My DH still refers to DS2 as being an "accident" (not to his face!) In reality, we struggled for over a year to conceive DS1, and had to use Clomid. We assumed that the same would happen a second time, and my periods were really irregular, so decided to stop using contraception in order to have been "trying" for 12 months by the time we might actually want to go to the fertility clinic. Somehow a sneaky egg did manage to pop out of my crappy ovaries after about 5 months of this strategy, and DS2 appeared 9 months later. My retort is that he was a surprise, but definitely not an accident.

Well, for us it was one day of I couldn't be bothered with the condom in the moment. He just went along with it thinking it was probably a less risky week in the month if I wasn't bothering with the condom. No baby intended on either side.

I find this such a weird comment. If there was a male pill, I would want to trust my partner to have it. You shouldn't be in a relationship with someone of you don't trust them so much that you need to use a condom. That's seriously disturbing

Well, mine was an accident. And I was the one dragging my heels, not my husband. So it does happen.

Great article, thanks for sharing.

If men don't want to father children, they should use condoms or get a vasectomy. It's very simple.

I think there are a very tiny number of women who lie to their sexual partners about being on the pill (or having a coil or implant) but this is vanishingly rare compared to the number of men who know their sexual partners are not using contraception, and decide not to use a condom and to ejaculate inside her anyway. There are also genuine contraception failures which though rare are considerably less rare than women lying about contraception, IMO.

I once worked with a girl when we were apprentices. She was 19, had some time off sick and when she returned she said she’d been told by doctors she most likely wouldn’t be able to get pregnant unless she did so soon. She had a new boyfriend within a few weeks and quit about a month after as she’d gotten pregnant and she was ‘in such a shock’.

Im not saying she planned it… but very convenient.

I know someone who did it successfully. I know someone else who tried to sabotaged contraception and failed.

I think most accidents are when both parties just decide to take a lax approach to contraception instead of making the choice to actively TTC though. Or they're embarrassed to admit to trying for whatever reason, like the timing isn't great. Me and DH claimed our first DC was an accident because we were young and it saved a lot of patronising questions.

I don't know if your username is related to this, but what you have described is rape. I am sorry your husband did that to you

Yes, I think this is really common.
It seems odd, but often people fail to appreciate the consequences, despite knowing it logically.

Must be a trick of biology.

I've heard so many women say such nonsense that drs supposedly said to them. I personally know 2 women who both told me that their dr said they would not be able to get pregnant,one due to PCOS and one for something else. Even when they were saying this I was thinking "not they didn't say that". It's not something drs say!

One has 2 children now, the other 3. Easily.

People do talk some shite.

I have heard dozens of women say "We aren't trying." But they are also not using reliable long acting contraception (or anything at all), so THEY might be surprised by a pregnancy, but I am not.

Pregnancies are rarely an accident. If something goes wrong with a condom there's still fallbacks. There's a statistical chance the pill doesn't work but then that's always an excuse for an 'oops' pregnancy.

My DD was unplanned I was very young so definitely not TTC. I also took the MAP but t was too late I did not plan the pregnancy and I booked a termination twice but couldn't go through with it. It was one time unprotected and I got pregnant , if its a younger person they are statistically more likely to conceive much more easily.
Not everyone takes ages to conceive or needs to plan cycles or sex.

I took the MAP and it didn’t work. Took it within 24 hours too. Accidents do happen but of course my twat of a boyfriend then blamed me and accused me of not taking the MAP etc. because he didn’t want the baby and as pp have said the whole ‘it’s your fault, you planned this’ was thrown at me even though at another point he said ‘I should have known better’ about the fact that he didn’t pull out and that we were both being stupidly risky and naive in assuming we’d be ok. When you’ve never been pregnant I think you can be that naive that you think it won’t happen to you. I absolutely wasn’t planning one but was adamant abortion wasn’t for me.

I didn't realise at the time it was an abusive relationship. I was not on the pill for health reasons, he didn't like using a condom. He got what he wanted without having to take any responsibility in some very subtle ways. I didn't know any better.