To not understand how a baby can be a “suprise” unless contraception failed

[Pebblesandstones008]

I understand if you are on contraception, been told for years you are infertile, or going through menopause that becoming pregnant is a shock.

But I don’t understand when friends tell me their baby is a surprise and proceed to tell me they used the pull out method or “got drunk one night” so forgot to use a condom.

Someone I follow online has announced their surprise baby, a huge shock, that she got pregnant 2 months after giving birth and wasn’t using contraception but was breastfeeding so didn’t think it was possible.

I just think do 2 adults not assume if they are having unprotected sex at any point their is a chance of pregnancy?

This ^
I was really struggling to keep my mouth shut in my youth when someone announced that.
How come being a pregnant after unprotected sex could be a surprise?

Remember OP in real life your (realistic and logical) view counts as one of unpopular opinions. 🙂

Completely

As my name suggests, our baby was a surprise. We were not planning a pregnancy, were talking precautions and both truly believed we would need fertility treatments after spending the previous nearly 4 years of not preventing pregnancy. You can actually only get pregnant in a small window each month, so if you’re not actively trying it is usually a surprise when it happens!

Yes there's a chance of pregnancy but it's actually quite unlikely that conception will happen per month hence the surprise. Or you may not have planned for the conception act to happen as it did so are still surprised that this significant event has happened in your life. Having said that I would say my eldest was an accident but not a surprise as I was very conscious that I might get pregnant as a result.

It's a rubbish excuse by irresponsible people.

Contraception information is freely available in many formats and languages and contraception of various types is free.

Surprise babies are nothing of the sort - there is no surprise that 'pulling out' will lead to a child.

Maybe they're worried they'll be judged (too old/young/too big an age gap between kids, not employed, health or whatever other reason they think people will use to say they shouldn't have got pregnant), so it's easier to say that.
Also it's surprising how many people think pulling out is safe, or how little people know about contraception in general (and I'm not saying I'm an expert myself).

DC2 was a surprise. We had started TTC and were disappointed when DC1 came down with a bug and became a velcro toddler for the whole of my fertile period in our second month of TTC. No sex when fertile = no pregnancy, we thought.

We were wrong. :)

Congratulations xx

This reminds me of a joke when I was at school, “What do you call people who rely on ‘natural’ contraceptive measures? Parents!” Things can happen to make contraceptives fail, eg cancer treatment, or as you say menopause, PCOS etc, but outside of those kinds of issues, I will be honest and say the only people I knew who became pregnant ‘accidentally’ were in one case idiots, and in another just ridiculously super fertile and didn’t realise that his vasectomy had self healed (tbh I didn’t even know that could happen until it happened to them), apparently there’s a ‘snip not tied’ method where this can happen. I will admit I was, hmm, incredulous, but judging from their reactions to the news it was legit! (My main issue was how the heck were they having sex just a few days after his op, but that’s a different issue!)

Well, I had/have and irregular cycle. We weren't tracking it for a while, and with 21-36 days and a lot of travel, we were rather surprised by the month that was a "hit". Neither date we had sex that month were anywhere near ovulation.

And I breastfed for 20m, and I have typical symptoms that come with ovulation that didn't come back until I stopped feeding.

I don't think that it's that mad to be surprised, TTC is unpredictable. The people who had the worst shocks in my friend groups were the ones who got pregnant first cycle every time.

I don’t get this either. Having sex without contraception = ttc. If a baby results, it isn’t a surprise.

It's usually a suprise for the man. Not so much the woman.

“there”.

You didn’t take contraception. That is what happened.

I had a friend who never had periods and was told she couldn't get pregnant, at one time she was really unwell and fortunately her gp did a pregnancy test before investigating something else (much worse that was being postulated). She was six months pregnant and went on to have two more babies after that. She was pretty chubby so the bump didn't show at all.

I was going to edit it but couldn’t be bothered,

are you bored haha?

A lot depends on context too. This most recent stint of TTC took over three years, so in a way I wouldn’t always assume that an ooopsie at the wrong time of the month would necessitate an immediate dash to the pharmacy for the MAP, so I can understand how people with similar backgrounds can become dangerously laissez faire.

And whilst all my TTC stints have been long, tough slogs, I also know that things can vary/change very quickly. The pregnancy/early MC which started my last TTC journey off was the result of being a bit crap at taking the pill for a couple of months. I then had another early MC 3 years later, but then conceived again just 3 months after that. So fertility issues can never be taken for granted…

See that is a surprise!!

Not, we were having unprotected sex and we can’t believe we got pregnant

I had 2 children and was lucky enough to get pregnant as soon as we tried for each of them.
I did not have any other children because I was taking the pill. If I missed a pill, we took an additional method. If I was taking antibiotics, we took an additional method. I do not believe in surprise babies.

So 6/30 days is 20% of days, at a 20% chance of pregnancy which means unprotected sex on a random day has a 4% chance of pregnancy - which is pretty low odds.

Most people don’t get pregnant when actively trying the first month, and the NHS don’t think that’s unusual until you get to 12 months of active trying. So one random instance of sex in a year resulting in a pregnancy is pretty slim odds.

The thing is you don’t know someone’s history. A friend of mine is currently pregnant in a similar situation. Her current DC is less than a year old. But he was an IVF baby after more than a decade of trying and losses. So for her yes falling pregnant was a surprise.

Your GP was right, you are wrong

https://www.nhs.uk/contraception/methods-of-contraception/natural-family-planning/#lactational-amenorrhoea-method-lam/

"Effectiveness of lactational amenorrhea method
If you are breastfeeding and follow lactational amenorrhea method correctly all the time, it is more than 99% effective at preventing pregnancy.
If you do not follow the instructions exactly, it’s 98% effective and 2 in 100 women will get pregnant again within 6 months of giving birth."

My first was a surprise. I wasn’t on the pill for various reasons and we both got drunk at New Year and had booked a holiday to Italy for the following September. I wasn’t in Italy that month, I was in a maternity hospital giving birth 😁Best mistake we ever made.

With my second we went on a 4 day holiday whilst i was on my period, it was a pill that you had a break for 7 days then restarted again.

I forgot to take a new packet with me so ended up taking my pill 1 day later than i should have.

Anyways fell pregnant, so she was a suprise lol..

All kinds of reasons! Humans take risks all the time. Some people taking the risks wouldn't really mind having a baby, some secretly want a baby but find it difficult to admit it socially for various reasons, some don't plan their lives completely, some people don't fully believe it will happen to them, some people are ill informed about risks, some people take relatively informed risks because the risks are incredibly low (e.g. pregnancy at 45 or something), some people are chaotic with chaotic lives, some are drunk and do something stupid in the heat of the moment...