Hey Mistress S, I hope to be an OHSU'er like you in a year or two!
FWIW, my baby sister (20 now), almost as smart as me
had a "surprise" baby a year ago. She was on OCPs, took them perfectly, and had going-away-to-college sex with her BF of 3 years. Missed a period, took a pregnancy test, negative, missed another period, another negative test, and was still on pills so figured she was just screwy, and besides, she was in an all-girls dorm at a conservative Christian college, so thought for a while her cycle was just thrown off by all the female pheromones circling the halls. Never felt sick or anything. Didn't really think anything was amiss until her clothes started to feel tight despite having LOST 6-7# from running so much.
She went to her best friend's mom, an OB-GYN, who confirmed she was pregnant but thought "maybe" 14 weeks by exam (this is an OB with 15 years experience). Went for the sonogram the next day--26 WEEKS!!! And I kid you not, she still fit into her size 2 jeans and had a flat tummy.
But it was weird--almost immediately, as soon as the pregnancy was recognized, she filled out fast. Caleb arrived not 3 months later, was adopted by wonderful parents (the most agonizing decision I have ever been a part of), and my sister left the hospital in her size 2 jeans. Sickening, I know. It's an open adoption and we get to visit him every few months. My sister is completely at peace with her decision and back in college, pre-med, determined to be an OB-GYN. I have no doubt she will be.
We all tend to forget that 99.3% effectiveness with PERFECT USE for hormonal contraceptives means that 7 women out of 1000 will get pregnant in a year. I had a patient get pregnant on NuvaRing a few months ago--and yup, with perfect use. I think that every once in a while, despite our best scientific efforts to control every aspect of our lives (fertility included), we are not in ultimate control unless we choose not to have sex.
It's interesting what another poster said about "if you get married, you should be prepared to have children"...huh. My ex-husband and I got married agreeing that we most likely would NOT have children by choice. Years went on and he changed his mind but I didn't. Ultimately, it came down to my selfishness: I didn't want to have HIS children (but that's another story).
That was a really painful turning point to realize I could hem and haw and go on being married to him and deny him something he really wanted but I didn't or let him go. OMG it hurt more than you can possibly imagine unless you've been through it. Divorce is more like death than anything else I could fathom--in fact, often I thought it would have been easier if he had died (he threatened suicide more than once; eventually I gave up and said hey, I can't do this anymore, I can't fix you).
Oops, didn't mean to spout off personal stuff in there. I do find it interesting though that in all our 13+ years together (seriously, we started dating when I was 15), in how many thousands of episodes of intercourse, we never had an accident. Does that mean it wasn't meant to be? Dunno. But it's always made me wonder....
Lisa
Mistress S said:
I think all of this talk of birth control methods such as the pill being unreliable is being blown a bit out of proportion. When used perfectly (meaning you take it at the same time every day), combined oral contraceptives are about 99.6% effective. I agree that this could be difficult for some people to do, however; I myself am crappy about remembering to take pills every day, which is why I have used depo (injectable contraceptive) for >9 years. As long as you get your injection every 12 weeks or so--4 whopping times a year I have to think about my fertility--depo is almost as effective as permanent sterilization at preventing pregnancy. If you don't like depo or pills, there are also patches and rings, which require weekly and monthly use, respectively. If you don't want hormones, use condoms (which, if used correctly with every act of intercourse, are very effective) or get an IUD. If cost is an issue, GO TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD or your county health department, where I guarantee you will be able to obtain free condoms and affordable birth control.
Of course, there will always be that 0.4% of people who get pregnant even when using hormonal birth control correctly, but the reality is that most unplanned pregnancies happen because the parents didn't use contraception--period. I have worked in a reproductive health clinic for over 7 years, and have seen countless unplanned pregnancies in that time. In the vast, vast majority of these cases, pregnancy occurred because people were, simply put, being irresponsible. People who say they "use condoms" because they do so 75% of the time, or that they are "on the pill" because they take it 5/7 days a week, are not using their birth control method correctly and therefore if they become pregnant it is not because their method failed, but rather because they did not make it a priority to use it as instructed. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but I firmly believe that control over our reproduction is one of the greatest advances of the past century, particularly for women, and it saddens me that so many fail to take advantage of this incredible freedom to plan our families that our grandmothers (and for some of us, our mothers) didn't truly have. Unplanned children can of course be a joy for some, but more often it results only in unhappy choices for individuals and for society. Bringing another human being into this world is the largest responsiblity most of us will likely face, and it shouldn't be undertaken lightly. After seeing the cavalier attitude so many take towards reproduction, I feel I better understand why so many children (and later, adults) in our society are such a mess--when so many of their parents act as if pregnancy just happened to them like getting the measles, how much of a sense of responsibility can we expect them to pass on to their children? I am obviously referring here less to committed couples who are ambivalent about having children, but who are able to love and care for a child if pregnancy occurs, and perhaps aren't as rigorous about using birth control for that reason, than I am to people who have absolutely nothing to offer a child and don't particularly want one, but nevertheless practice lackluster (if any) contraceptive use. Given the effectiveness and availability of reliable birth control today, I don't think it is unfair to view pregnancy as a choice people make, either actively or passively (again, recognizing that there are some exceptions like rape and true contraceptive failure, but that these ultimately comprise a tiny fraction of unintended pregnancies). To qoute a bumper sticker, "a world of wanted children would make a world of difference."
