Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

To ask if you know anyone personally who got pregnant by lying about contraception?

1000 replies

Pavemw · 03/01/2025 19:57

Just that, really. I have an extremely close friend who confided in me at new year that her 11 year old dd wasn’t actually an accident. I have known her half my life and our kids are friends. She was with this man for a short time and the relationship did not last the pregnancy although he does see his dd and has been pretty good to my friend financially.

I can’t get my head around it. This is someone who I go to for advice. She’s always empathetic and kind. I can’t even believe she would have done it and I don’t know why it’s bothering me as much as it is. I don’t know her ex, haven’t seen him in many years. I almost feel she’s lied to me too, which I know is silly. She said she was late 30s, had been told her fertility wasn’t great and had had enough of being messed around by men, so when this next one seemed keen to commit she just went for it. I know she has been treated badly in the past and has always put her heart out there only to be messed about or strung along so I can almost feel how frustrated she would have been but… to do this? I can’t imagine it as I had my two in a happy marriage. Maybe I being horribly judgmental. I can’t reconcile this with who I thought she was all these years. Am I being dramatic?!

OP posts:
Thread gallery
8
heroinechic · 03/01/2025 22:13

I can't see the need to lie, so many men are so bloody irresponsible when it comes to sex anyway.

I wanted another baby and my DH didn't (yet, wanted to move house first). I said ok - I'm not on any contraception and I'm not tracking cycles (cycles were irregular due to breastfeeding). Bought him condoms and told him it's his job to put one on, I wouldn't be prompting. Conceived two weeks later 😂

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:13

wigsonthegreenandhatsforthelifting · 03/01/2025 22:12

That's a very cold and callous attitude and I don't think it bears much relation to reality.

Making a simple statement of fact is neither cold nor callous.

You questioned whether any woman could carry a child to term and then have nothing to do with it.

I said they do. Everyday.

ShesNotACowShesAFox · 03/01/2025 22:13

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:13

Making a simple statement of fact is neither cold nor callous.

You questioned whether any woman could carry a child to term and then have nothing to do with it.

I said they do. Everyday.

It’s not a fact though is it

OliveThe0therReindeer · 03/01/2025 22:14

DazedAndConfused321 · 03/01/2025 22:08

I'm aware, yes. This doesn't change the fact that some of these children, tragically, were 'given up'. I haven't stated all 100,000 were abandoned by their mothers. But every day, across the world, multiple babies and children are relinquished by their mother. This isn't some ridiculous lie, it is obvious truth.

Are you seriously trying to ague some point about “ women abandoning and giving up their babies without a second thought every day “ based on the dozen or so cases of child abandonment each year in the Uk, 90 % of whom are traced ?

Are you tying to make some false equivalence with the hundreds or thousand or children who are abandoned by their fathers?

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:14

heroinechic · 03/01/2025 22:13

I can't see the need to lie, so many men are so bloody irresponsible when it comes to sex anyway.

I wanted another baby and my DH didn't (yet, wanted to move house first). I said ok - I'm not on any contraception and I'm not tracking cycles (cycles were irregular due to breastfeeding). Bought him condoms and told him it's his job to put one on, I wouldn't be prompting. Conceived two weeks later 😂

THIS!

Which is what makes theft of consent even worse. You could make clear that you were not on contraception and enough men would chance it so why lie?

SallyWD · 03/01/2025 22:14

Yes my friend conceived all three of her children "accidentally". Told her partner she was taking the pill but flushed it down the toilet. Rather immoral.

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:15

ShesNotACowShesAFox · 03/01/2025 22:13

It’s not a fact though is it

If you think that women don’t give up children for adoption and abandon them everyday I am not sure what to tell you.

JammySlag · 03/01/2025 22:15

I’m pretty sure I’m the result of this based on a conversation with a close friend of my mothers. I think men need to take in hand their own fertility by insisting on using condoms or having a vasectomy if they don’t want the risk of children. Also contraception isn’t fool proof…. Happened to me on the pill. Apparently that I’d had a d&v bug could have made it ineffective.

Musicofthespiers · 03/01/2025 22:15

An old uni friend told someone she was infertile and allergic to latex. She was pregnant within two months of them getting together. He has been a good dad but they split up quickly.

ShesNotACowShesAFox · 03/01/2025 22:16

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:15

If you think that women don’t give up children for adoption and abandon them everyday I am not sure what to tell you.

No. You said they give up children “without a second thought”. Source please

Empressofall · 03/01/2025 22:17

Yep. My DH had a "best mate" who did this. Never trusted the bitch. She was/is in love with my DH but that's a story for another time. She had some health issues and I watched her follow Fertility pages on Insta. She drastically changed her lifestyle and didn't tell her partner she came off the pill. He never wanted kids and now she can't work out why he doesn't seem to like her and why their relationship is in shambles.
I'm glad she's miserable tbh.

DowntonShabbie · 03/01/2025 22:17

SallyWD · 03/01/2025 22:14

Yes my friend conceived all three of her children "accidentally". Told her partner she was taking the pill but flushed it down the toilet. Rather immoral.

He didn't work it out after two, even? Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he?

BlueSilverCats · 03/01/2025 22:17

@ShesNotACowShesAFox it is a fact my mum abandoned me in my little plastic hospital box.

It happens, especially if we're talking world wide, particularly countries with poor contraception or no /strict abortion laws.

Zanatdy · 03/01/2025 22:17

I would probably feel shocked, but brush it off. Surely men know this happens, and if they don’t want to be financially responsible for a child then they can prevent that. I agree that the biological urge can be strong, so no judgement from me.

StrawberryWater · 03/01/2025 22:18

Oh yeah and a friend of mine did it to her partner who was leaving her. They had a last hurrah on a drunken night and she tells me she purposefully forgot to take her contraception to make him stay. He stayed and 20 years later neither are happy.

Bobbing46 · 03/01/2025 22:18

MorrisZapp · 03/01/2025 21:54

Where did the forcing bit come from? Millions of women are on the pill by choice. I was on it for fifteen years.

I took the pill for from puberty. I have PCSO. I take the pill for me. I do not take it for a man or to protect a man from my pregnancy.

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:19

ShesNotACowShesAFox · 03/01/2025 22:16

No. You said they give up children “without a second thought”. Source please

No the other poster said “without a second thought”.

Is said women give up their children for adoption and abandon them everyday.

Some probably without a second thought, some with a second thought I don’t know, don’t care. Not relevant to what I wrote that is demonstrably false to claim that a woman who carried a child to term would not be able to have nothing to do with it.

That happens everyday.

wigsonthegreenandhatsforthelifting · 03/01/2025 22:19

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:13

Making a simple statement of fact is neither cold nor callous.

You questioned whether any woman could carry a child to term and then have nothing to do with it.

I said they do. Everyday.

How many of those women hand their children over without a single qualm?

If a woman has her child adopted, how much agonising must she go through to make that decision and in the years after she has made it?

Many children are taken into care because their parents/mother can't adequately look after them. Do you think those parents let that happen lightly? That because of their issues that they can't control, someone gets to take their children away?

Sorry but I don't think it's as easy as you make out!

ShesNotACowShesAFox · 03/01/2025 22:19

BlueSilverCats · 03/01/2025 22:17

@ShesNotACowShesAFox it is a fact my mum abandoned me in my little plastic hospital box.

It happens, especially if we're talking world wide, particularly countries with poor contraception or no /strict abortion laws.

it doesn’t mean she did it without a second thought or that loads of women do. In fact I’d bet the rate of “meh take the baby I’m not bothered” is 0

DazedAndConfused321 · 03/01/2025 22:19

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:12

Which is what I mean by a lot of people stealing AAVE and not actually understanding it / using it incorrectly.

It's not AAVE, it was a white woman saying it, and a trend taken on by everyone. Not everyone is American or needs to understand american culture!

DazedAndConfused321 · 03/01/2025 22:20

wigsonthegreenandhatsforthelifting · 03/01/2025 22:19

How many of those women hand their children over without a single qualm?

If a woman has her child adopted, how much agonising must she go through to make that decision and in the years after she has made it?

Many children are taken into care because their parents/mother can't adequately look after them. Do you think those parents let that happen lightly? That because of their issues that they can't control, someone gets to take their children away?

Sorry but I don't think it's as easy as you make out!

jesus christ no one said it's easy! You just denied that children are abandoned every day. They do get abandoned every single day, probably every hour! no it's not easy. No it's not ideal. Happy now?

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:21

wigsonthegreenandhatsforthelifting · 03/01/2025 22:19

How many of those women hand their children over without a single qualm?

If a woman has her child adopted, how much agonising must she go through to make that decision and in the years after she has made it?

Many children are taken into care because their parents/mother can't adequately look after them. Do you think those parents let that happen lightly? That because of their issues that they can't control, someone gets to take their children away?

Sorry but I don't think it's as easy as you make out!

Of the 100s of thousands if not millions who do so I would have no idea. There will be multiple different reactions to women dealing with unwanted motherhood.

But many do. And many decline contact with, for example, adopted children years down the line.

Look what you claimed was factually inaccurate - that carrying a child to term makes a woman unable to have nothing to do with it.

That was a demonstrably inaccurate claim.

wigsonthegreenandhatsforthelifting · 03/01/2025 22:21

BlueSilverCats · 03/01/2025 22:17

@ShesNotACowShesAFox it is a fact my mum abandoned me in my little plastic hospital box.

It happens, especially if we're talking world wide, particularly countries with poor contraception or no /strict abortion laws.

I'm so sorry that you experienced this. Have you made contact with your birth mother?

I'd like to think that your mother didn't do what she did lightly, but because she was desperate and could see no other way out, and thought even misguidedly that she was doing the best that she could for you.

I hope you have had a happy life xx

Purplecatshopaholic · 03/01/2025 22:21

i know two for sure, and two others I suspect did. Not my circus obvs, but I think it’s totally wrong on so many levels.

wigsonthegreenandhatsforthelifting · 03/01/2025 22:22

JHound · 03/01/2025 22:21

Of the 100s of thousands if not millions who do so I would have no idea. There will be multiple different reactions to women dealing with unwanted motherhood.

But many do. And many decline contact with, for example, adopted children years down the line.

Look what you claimed was factually inaccurate - that carrying a child to term makes a woman unable to have nothing to do with it.

That was a demonstrably inaccurate claim.

Edited

I'm admitting nothing because I am pretty certain that most mothers who give up their babies don't do it lightly.

I find your attitude very strange.

Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.

This thread is not accepting new messages.