If you have CHOSEN to not have children ...

[canttellyouwhereorwhatido]

Have you ever fallen pregnant by accident ?

I am staggered by the amount of MN who have had accidental pregnancies and am trying to understand how this happened. Are you regularly aborting because the contraceptive options are so unreliable ? Or is this a cop out for those who want babies but partners not keen and manipulating the situation as an 'oops' ... sorry about that but I don't believe in termination ?

If it is unreliable contraception . Are the failure rates simply lies made up by the manufacturer ? If so, something needs to be done to ensure more reliable contraception. I am assuming here that child free couples have just as much (imagine a LOT more ) sex than those with kids ... OR is it as simple as , 'it's no good just having the pill/condom/ diaphragm etc if you don't use it according to manufacturer's instructions ?

I stated factually that I have always used condoms correctly, and I suspect people don't always. If you wish to have a bizarre and insecure overreaction to that, that is on you.

This is what the OP said:
" OR is it as simple as , 'it's no good just having the pill/condom/ diaphragm etc if you don't use it according to manufacturer's instructions ?"

And I was adding my own experience to that. And you don't get to shout my life experience down.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow but also that men can produce sperm in pre-ejaculation fluid before they are erect enough to use the condom. It's usually not many sperm, but it only takes one...

Umm, what? This makes it sound like you're putting it in before you're putting a condom on, am I picking that up right? Because that would indeed count as operator error.

Men can use condoms. They can be in control of their own fertility. They can also have vasectomies, or abstain from piv sex.

I’ve been sexually active since early teens, never wanted kids, never been pregnant

So I did want children. I had a much wanted pregnancy in my early 20s but miscarried. A couple of years later, I found out my family had cancer genes and the genetics team strongly advised me and my cousin against babies because of passing on the gene. So that was the end of those dreams and I'm deliberately childless. Not really by choice, but having had 20 years of regular screening etc and scanxiety, I'm glad I didn't have a child to put them through all that too.

I think true accidental pregnancies are rare.
Of people who say they had accidental pregnancies it is most likely that the contraceptive method failed, they thought they wouldn't get pregnant as a one off, were being lax with contraception as they thought it wouldn't happen.
In the past I have told (inaccurately) told people DD was a suprise baby. I wasn't on the pill and had sex once in that cycle, using the rhythm method but I had long cycles and miscalculated days. Whilst falling pregnant was unlikely, it definitely wasn't completely accidental.

Sorry I've just realised this is the childfree forum so apologies if my comment is unwanted.

In my personal experience I feel like my very actively not wanting children has made me incredibly vigilant about understanding how pregnancy occurs and use of contraception in a way which my friends who have children / one day want children are not.

From my early teens I can remember I know that I was very aware of what was and wasn’t safe and knew what the urban myths were (eg can’t get pregnant if you do it standing up!).

I consciously decided not to lose my virginity until I was away at uni as I wanted to make sure that if I ever did accidentally become pregnant that I would be able to have an abortion without my parents knowing.

One of my best friends became unexpectedly pregnant at 36 with her third child and she was astounded to hear that the pull out method wasn’t reliable. I relayed this story to some colleagues and couldn’t believe it when it turned out that they also didn’t know this. I’m talking educated adult women who already have children!

I’ve never had sex without both being on the pill and using condoms. I hear people saying things about how condoms ruin the mood etc but for me if there was not one involved I could not relax and enjoy myself without knowing I was properly protected!

I also periodically take pregnancy tests just because of the horror ‘I didn’t know I was pregnant’ stories.

Writing this all out I’m acknowledging it sounds a bit extreme but I know what I want and what makes me feel safe and it feels ludicrous to not do the things that guarantee that! I guess it’s no different to the very big steps that many people have to take in order to try and become pregnant.

@mrlistersgelfbride not at all unwelcome as far as I'm concerned, I think you've given a really interesting perspective.

I had an accident 20 years ago. Well, I say 'accident' but I'd had bad guts which presumably caused my pill to fail and I should have been more vigilant. Did a test on a Friday night, was booked in at Marie Stopes by Saturday lunchtime. Never regretted it.

I’ve never had sex without both being on the pill and using condoms. I hear people saying things about how condoms ruin the mood etc but for me if there was not one involved I could not relax and enjoy myself without knowing I was properly protected!.

I’ve never understood why people would rather risk unwanted pregnancy than risk ruining the mood! After all the consequences of the former could last a lifetime.

Ive been having sex since I was 16 and have never been pregnant. I can confidently say the same for siblings and close friends too as we've discussed it at length.

Never been pregnant, never wanted children so was pretty obsessive about contraception (and had a late start with that anyway as I didn't start having sex till I was married at 33). Very glad I never got pregnant accidentally as I don't believe abortion is morally right so that would have been soul-destroying. Thankfully I am now well past menopause so no longer an issue.

This is an interesting read. One thing has jumped out at me regarding people using the phrase 'unplanned' despite not using contraception.
On the conception/pregnancy boards women often talk about fertility/ovulation tracking, early testing etc
This is new to me as I'm past it, so when I was young it was very much about you 'risk' pregnancy every single time you have unprotected sex.

I do wonder of the advent of all the tracking etc, once solely used by couples struggling to conceive, has given rise to the notion that sex on it's own isn't enough to cause pregnancy.

Yes I realise most women understand more clearly than that, but it does beg the question really.

I don't think so - I wasn't aware of how you could track and measure hormones to pin point exactly when you ovulated until I was trying to conceive. Before then I basically thought you could get pregnant pretty much any time - and now I know realistically there's only about a 48 hour window each month where you're in with a good chance of it happening!

Agreed, but with tracking you can pinpoint that 48 hours. If you're not tracking because you're not actively trying, you won't know exactly when that window is. So you be better off assuming you're going to get pregnant, I would think.

If he really didn't want kids, he'd have had the snip.

Unless a woman literally forces a man to penetrate her bareback, the "accident" is something he consents to the risk of.

Women aren't responsible for enacting men's wishes about their fertility.

If she consented to sex with the condom and he didn't use one, that's rape. I can't imagine how frightening it must be to work with a man who will openly announce his decision to rape his wife to the whole office.

“I treated myself”

I felt sick reading that. The contempt he has for your body, treating gambling with your fertility like having an icecream.

I'm glad you're divorcing him.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia Thank you for your comment. It was my therapist who had to point out how bad this was.

Then once I saw it, I realised how awful a lot of other things he said ‘in jest’ were. “Have you met my first wife?” Is a fairly mild one.

I have so many of them, but I don’t want to derail the thread.

I wouldn't say LTB. I'd be saying good for him that he's taking measures himself and it's also good for you that he's doing so because the Pill isn't 100% effective (and also quadruples your risk of having a stroke so the least he can do is put a condom on if you're taking that kind of health risk).

Sperm doesn't have to be in the vagina to swim to the fallopian tubes. A "drippy" man might leak a little onto the woman's vulva, she might unwittingly get some on her hands and then pleasure her own clitoris, he might get some on his hands and then touch her vulva...

Umm eww at that visual, but yes I'm well aware thank you. That would still count as contraceptive failure and emergency contraception should be sought. It wouldn't be 'perfect use' of a condom.

No, I'm 57 and never wanted kids. I was having regular heterosexual sex until the menopause and I've never been pregnant. I had the pill first ( which was pants) and then the non- hormonal IUD. If I had become pregnant, I would've had an abortion but thankfully it was never an issue.

It might well count as operator error, but what it's not is "putting it in before you're putting a condom on" and many people wouldn't understand that a "drippy" man poses that risk even without putting his penis anywhere near the woman's vagina.