Not trying for a baby vs not trying to prevent it!

[MulledWhiney]

I feel like I have misunderstood “unplanned pregnancies” my entire life and would love to hear other people’s opinions!

A good friend of mine is pregnant with baby number 2. I’m very happy for her, but this means her due date is the EXACT date we have (very hard fought for and very expensive) Taylor Swift Eras tickets for, so it’s very unlikely she will be able to go. We had spoken before about not getting pregnant at a bad time for the concert, and so when I asked how it happened, she said it wasn’t planned. When I asked further about what happened (we are close enough to talk details), it transpires that although they weren’t actively trying to get pregnant (tracking ovulation etc), they also weren’t actively trying to prevent pregnancy.

In my head, not using ANY form of prevention still trying to get pregnant. “Unplanned” to me always meant you were using birth control but for whatever reason it didn’t work. Now I’m looking back on my entire life and wondering if I’ve got it all mistaken 😂. I read a lot of teenage magazines in the early 2000’s with very strong messages on contraception and I don’t think I’ve been able to let that go!

Am I the odd one out here?? What does everyone else think? What would you define as “unplanned” ?

(I am meaning this to be light-hearted, there are no hard feelings about the friend’s pregnancy, I am still going to the concert 😂 I’m just really curious about how other people define planned and not planned)

If someone was having unprotected sex but not tracking anything, which camp would that fall in for you?

I am 100% happy for my friend and will be soaking in all of the baby snuggles (after I’m back from the weekend away at the concert 😂). I’m not overthinking this particular pregnancy, it’s happened and that’s that!

Maybe I am overthinking the general unplanned/planned thing though. But it just surprised me so much that someone had such a different definition to me that I was curious to see what other people thought!

I’m with you OP, I was a teenager in the early 2000s and the message was very much “IF YOU HAVE SEX WITHOUT CONTRACEPTION YOU WILL BECOME PREGNANT AND IT WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE”.

If you’re not actively trying to prevent it then it’s not unplanned, maybe unwanted, but not unplanned.

I’m glad it isn’t just me then 😂

Think it kind of depends on your situation & intentions.

I didn't use contraception with a partner for ~7 years from 30 onwards.

We didn't actively want a baby at any particular time, but we both had good jobs, stable long term relationship, owned the house and had agreed that we were fine with it if it happened.

Never tracked anything, or put any effort into it, because we weren't bothered either way - pretty much just letting the universe take its course.

As it happens, we were one of the 1 in 7 couples with (in our case unexplained) infertility, and that was also fine.

So while I probably heard the same kinds of contraception messages as you growing up (and was absolutely religious about it up till then, at times when I knew I definitely didn't want to get pregnant), I can see an argument for unplanned meaning both "not actively trying, but also not actively avoiding", as well as "actively avoiding but mistakes were made".

Im surprised at replies saying ‘trying for a baby’ means tracking ovulation etc. For plenty of people TTC just means coming off contraception.

Mine too! I am now thinking about any time anyone has said a pregnancy was unplanned (in real life and in tv/film) and thinking do they mean my definition of unplanned or the alternative definition I have just learnt?

I'm pregnant now. We weren't actively tracking / timing sex but we weren't using contraception either, so I wouldn't refer to my pregnancy as 'unplanned'.

A mild surprise after several years of no contraception and no babies, but not unplanned.

I think they're the same thing given people can get pregnant on the first go

This message exactly 😂 pretty much every issue of Sugar and J17 had some feature about it and it is now deeply ingrained in me!

Women are only actually fertile a handful of days per month
You could have sex for months without contraception and not get pregnant if you didn't have sex on the 'righr days', so I do think there is a difference between the intent to conceive and having an active desire and awareness of that goal, Vs just being generally open to it but not consciously aiming to achieve pregnancy when you're having sex

I’m with you OP. If you have sex with no attempt to prevent pregnancy- whether that be formal contraception, or even just pulling out - then you cannot claim it was “unplanned”. Not everyone bothers to track ovulation etc. Unprotected sex is enough.

An unplanned pregnancy is one which happens due to contraceptive failure or a one off getting carried away or mistake; you weren’t planning a pregnancy at the time. Regular sex without contraception indicates a plan or wish to become pregnant, as for most people without reduced fertility that is what will happen.

Hard agree , OP. Anyone who is deliberately having unprotected sex is trying for a baby! It’s ridiculous to actively decide to stop or not use contraception and then claim your pregnant was not planned 😂

I share your definition OP. However many, many women don't!
I am a GP and it's crazy the number of times a woman says they aren't using contraception but are sexually active, and I say 'so you're trying for a baby? Are you taking folic acid?' and they look at me in horror or laugh like I've made a joke.
When I explain I'd say about 50% then say it's a would be happy if I was but don't mind too much if I'm not situation, and 50% would be the worst thing in the world situation. The latter group I then really try to encourage contraception but still sometimes it falls on deaf ears.

We had slight fertility issues (wonky genetics writing off roughly half of pregnancies) so did have unprotected sex for I think about 5 years in total, resulting in two babies in the end.

I didn't think of either of them as unplanned. It was just an extended TTC. With the first one we did do more tracking and stuff which didn't happen with the second one because we had a toddler. I probably wouldn't have said to people "Oh we are trying for another baby" (I might have said if it happens it happens) and didn't really think of ourselves as trying. The timing was a bit inconvenient in some ways - I had to walk out of a job I was in the trial period for. We wouldn't have skipped months either. But then, no, definitely not unplanned. I might have described it as unplanned to the job though? I can't remember TBH. I do remember feeling awkward and wanting to convey that I hadn't started the job then immediately started shagging with intent. But if you don't have typical fertility then you can't just put your life on hold or stop TTC for certain months because it will never happen if you do that. Most people can identify a rough period of 6-12 months or so and then aim for a due date within that span, and plan general life things around it, but you don't really get that choice with infertility, especially if it's a kind of infertility which causes less chance than we seemed to have. You also tend to know it's such a minute chance that it will actually happen at the "awkward" time that it doesn't make sense to avoid those months anyway.

OTOH I wasn't using contraception when I conceived DC1 with a different dad (no infertility) I DID think of that as unplanned, because I was 19 and didn't particularly want to get pregnant and had sort of vaguely been using a combination of condoms/withdrawal. The problem was I think my ex didn't have the same idea that I did, because he kept being like "Oops too late" and I was too daft and soft to get angry about it. The thing is I'd done that various times and always got away with it... until that one time I didn't. I don't really know what I was thinking when I was younger TBH!

I don't think this is realistically true, if you want to not get pregnant while having random unprotected sex it takes quite a lot of awareness of your cycle. You are naturally more horny around your fertile time and also release some kind of hormone which men find arousing, so if you're not actively tracking and knowing exactly when to avoid, there's quite a high chance you'll end up having sex some time around that fertile window. It's quite a long time you need to avoid too - about 7-8 days to be totally sure, and most couples have sex at least once a week (and if you're having less then it's probably more on a whim, which means probably susceptible to the hormonal part).

So what you're saying is that you have TS tickets you don't want? I'll have them OP!

(Everyone else has totally missed the point of this thread)

My DC are in their 40s. In my day 'trying for a baby' meant sex without contraception. I'm baffled by all the tracking etc.

Hmm, for me it was more of a decision to accept "if it happens, it happens". (Can't be doing with the stress of actively TTC). Yes, we decided to stop contraception (withdrawal), but it was with the knowledge that if I did get pregnant we'd be very happy and ready.

I wouldn't say it was unplanned, more I wasn't trying.

However, I view planning / actively trying as ovulation tracking, sex on specific days TO get pregnant.

I don't know, it's more nuanced IMO.

I would say that your friends pregnancy was planned. I’d never even heard of temperature taking and other such things to conceive until I started using Mumsnet, most people just stop taking the pill and hope for the best don’t they? The ‘trying’ part is just having sex.

But I think it’s too simplistic to say that if you have unprotected sex you are ‘planning’ to get pregnant. People are idiots and make mistakes sometimes and game the risks, are careless, or even drunk. This doesn’t sound like your pal though. I doubt many people who end up having an abortion after a drunken ONS think their pregnancy was planned.

I’d believe someone who said their pregnancy was unplanned even if they’d had unprotected sex. I’d think them a bit daft but we all make mistakes I guess.

All my babies were planned. I have never tracked anything. We stopped using contraception. That is trying for a baby.

Well at least she has a name for the baby.
Taylor can be suitable for a boy or girl 😂

We were TTC for a year and initially that meant stopping contraception. After no success we tracked periods and then TTC more scientifically for 2 months and conceived. Whilst baby 1 was not very old we used condoms. One night we threw caution to the wind because what were the chances when it took over a year to get baby 1?! Anyway, we definitely were not TTC but we also definitely did not use contraception. Babies 2&3 came along together in a surprise bogof deal.
BTW I think buying tickets/committing to an event aids pregnancy. After that first of no luck for #1 we got tickets for Take That. Of course I then got pregnant with baby due the day of the show!

I agree with you OP.
Imo your friend's baby is not unplanned.
Having tried unsuccessfully to conceive for several years however, I think it's unreasonable to put off conceiving for a concert!

I spent many years preventing pregnancy and then had to have IVF after being told the dr wanted to say there was no chance of us conceiving naturally. So I didn’t go on contraception after DS1 and somehow I got pregnant with DS2 (contrary to all the comments - my tubes did not suddenly know that to do - it was male factor infertility).

So I don’t know what that counts as either. Wasn’t planning it but didn’t prevent it and had been told by many medical professionals they wanted to say they 100% sure we wouldn’t conceive without IVF.