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)

I’m with you, OP. If you’re not using contraception, you are planning a baby. Either that, or you are deluded, because that’s likely what you’re going to get!

I think with readily available contraception (which is awesome, don't get me wrong), the relationship between sex and pregnancy had become a bit lost for some people.

By default sex = chance of pregnancy. That's literally the biological purpose of it. We interfere with the default by preventing, but take the prevention away and we are back to the default.

Egg and sperm don't give a damn whether they meet because you are charting temperatures, just aren't preventing, got carried away or your antibiotics made the pill ineffective.

For me, no contraception = trying for a baby because it meant I reverted to the biological reason for having sex. Charting just increases your chances.

Counts as unplanned for me, definitely. If you are told you are infertile by a medical professional you are definitely not unreasonable to believe them and not use contraception!

When we started TTC we were like your friend in that we didn’t track ovulation but has unprotected sex as we were just being casual about getting pregnant and not wanting to put pressure on it.

When this didn’t work we started tracking ovulation etc.

If I’d have got pregnant the first time (so before tracking ovulation) I’d still say my pregnancy was planned I think. But I’d also have been surprised I got pregnant because there’s so much that has to align for conception to happen.

There should be a vanishingly tiny number of accidental pregnancies. Genuine contraceptive failure is incredibly rare- it does happen, but it's almost always human failure not contraceptive failure. Every baby should be a baby longed for by both parents.

So fight me.

I’m with you OP, unplanned means a contraception failure.

Not using contraception = planned pregnancy.

Planned = trying to get pregnant, and deliberately having unprotected sex at the point in your cycle that you know you're ovulating and most fertile.

Unplanned = not actively trying to get pregnant, having unprotected sex throughout the month, possibly avoiding mid cycle when you're ovulating and most fertile, and sometimes using contraception. Or, relying on methods such as withdrawal as your only method of pregnancy prevention, with no actual barrier/pill/LARC.

Accidental = using a reliable method of contraception every time you have sex, but the contraception failing and you fall pregnant.

By my own personal definition, the pregnancy was indeed unplanned.

To me planning involves actively planning/trying for a baby, not necessarily tracking ovulation etc. I think there is room for middle ground between the 2. An unplanned pregnancy does not necessarily mean an unwanted pregnancy e.g. you might have the 2 children you planned for but feel happy either way about a 3rd. i.e. you wouldn’t got and get fertility treatment if it didn’t happen. Maybe there’s also a weigh up between the risks/downsides of using contraceptives and the chance of pregnancy e.g if your 45 or fully breastfeeding a baby not yet on solids your unlikely to conceive anyway. Perhaps also you do want a baby but not just yet ideally, however at the same you don’t want to actively prevent a pregnancy (unless significant reason) as it would then be quite rotten if you subsequently found you had a lot difficulty conceiving

👍😂

Although I’d love to become pregnant again so I’ve not been preventing for a couple of years but I think the professionals are probably correct and DS2 was just an incredibly lucky fluke!
If I did manage to get pregnant naturally again, I wouldn’t count it as unplanned though as I know it could be possible and we’d actually quite like another.

couldn’t go through IVF again though.

I agree 🤷🏼‍♀️ when used correctly (not hard given that just means popping along for an implant/IUD fitting) then it’s over 99% effective.

@Naptrappedmummy "I agree 🤷🏼‍♀️ when used correctly (not hard given that just means popping along for an implant/IUD fitting) then it’s over 99% effective."

A properly used condom is similarly effective. I absolutely understand why implants and IUDs are not easily available to all. But condoms are.

We took the not trying not preventing approach to TTC when we got married as we were 25 and had time on our side so I wasn’t worried . I thought it would take a while but it took 9 years in the end. I went through periods of tracking on and off but didn’t make a difference in the end.
After DC1 was born we used condoms like we’d done prior to getting married. Like another poster on this thread we didn’t bother one morning when I was 4 months postpartum. Yep. That resulted in DC2. Couldn’t have been more shocked after it took nearly a decade the first time. I know you hear stories of it happening to people but I didn’t think it would happen to me for as many as it happens for I’m sure for more it doesn’t.

It might change with age.
For a young adults and short relationships, I would understand unplanned as contraception failure.

For a bit older stable couple, it makes sense to distinguish between trying and leaving it on the nature.

That’s so interesting! I’m genuinely so interested reading everyone’s responses and as a GP I bet you’ve seen it all!

That’s crazy there are women who are not using contraception and actively don’t want to be pregnant though, I can’t even understand that thought process…

My 2 planned pregnancies were achieved simply by not using contraception. I did not measure anything - I just waited to see what would happen. All this measuring malarkey makes it a bit clinical. Just chuck out the pills and DID!!

Hahaha no I am most definitely going to the concert myself 😂😂😂

I will leave it a bit longer to find the next best Swiftie to go with though. Having had a pregnancy loss myself in the past and knowing all too well how awful that was, I want to wait until this pregnancy is further along before promising the ticket to anyone else!

Surely the first part of trying for a baby is stopping using contraceptives and having sex regularly. Giving your body enough time to work them out of the system (if hormonal)

If nothing happens after a while the "trying" ramps up with ovulation kits, bbt, charting, apps and such like...?

No contraception is either trying or risking imo, depending on the couple in question. Definitely can't claim unplanned though.

Enjoy TS, maybe baby could have a swifty nickname.😆

She's probably just said it wasn't planned because she knew you'd be annoyed about the concert. It sounds a bit like you interrogated her about how she managed to get pregnant 🤣

It can take years to conceive, you can't put your life on hold for it and not make plans.

Absolutely don’t agree, there is a risk to everything, we don’t say people planned to get cancer because they smoke or have a car accident because they drive 🙄 people sometimes assess the risk and sometimes they are just lucky/unlucky and sometimes they had a false understanding of that risk

It's not really incredibly rare though is it? People always say this but even with perfect use, the pill has a failure rate of 0.3%, condoms 2%, copper coil 0.6%. The implant, injection, hormonal coil and sterilisation are all better with failure rates of between 0.2% - 0.05%.

But this is all per year. Most people don't go for the permanent methods until they are older. And even the coil they don't recommend until after you've had children, so most people are using methods with either 0.3% or 2% failure rate even with perfect use.

When you extrapolate that to population level it's not a vanishingly tiny number at all, it's huge. Even if you take just 25 year olds for example - over 800,000 of those in the UK. Halve it and that's 400,000. About 75% sexually active - 300,000. A third of those married so assume they are TTC and cancel them out (very rough numbers)

2% of 200,000 is 4,000
0.3% of 200,000 is 600.

So somewhere between 600-4000 25 year olds will have a contraception failure per year even if they are not making any errors. And we're fertile for much longer than one year, so it's not just 25 year olds you have to count, so maybe multiply this by 20 (just to be conservative), and there will be somewhere in the region of 12,000-80,000 unplanned, not preventable pregnancies in the UK each year (at least).

If you actually think contraception failure is extremely rare then you either don't understand probability very well or you don't know how contraception failure rates work. Or maybe it's a point that you think everyone should be on LARC? But this is not suitable for everyone due to most of them being hormonal. And even if they did there would still be something like 2,000-8,000 unplanned, unpreventable pregnancies every year (at least, because I used a conservative estimate).

100% ageee with you OP! If you arnt actively preventing you are planning!

Also the whole if it happens, it happens thing baffles me!! Its a life changing and life long decision regardless of whichever way you go with it if you do get pregnant , and people say it like they are speculating whether to order a takeaway tonight 😂😂

We were like this because we were emotionally and financially ready, but as I'm only 30 this year, I felt reassured enough that we had enough time to just enjoy the process.

My mum struggled to have me, and I remember her saying that the worst thing for conception is putting pressure on yourself. If I really focussed on it, I would just be making myself more anxious and disappointed each month it didn't happen.

Turns out, it happened 1st month, so I didn't really have long to either prove or disprove the theory!

I’m the same as you! That’s what Just17 and Sugar told me….

If you have sex, you need to prepare to be pregnant has always been my approach, even if you use contraception, it’s possible to get pregnant.

Mind you, joke’s on me as I’ve been pregnant 15 times but no baby. What a waste all those condoms and pills were… so annoying!

This. I think a lot of people on MN go by this rule. 😂