Surprise Pregnancy: Why Unplanned Pregnancies Happen

It occurs extra typically than you would possibly assume. Virtually half of all pregnancies within the U.S. are unplanned.

“In the event you’re a girl and haven’t gone by way of menopause but, then it’s doable so that you can get pregnant,” says Siobhan Dolan, MD, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and girls’s well being at Albert Einstein Faculty of Drugs.

You may take steps to enhance your probabilities of conceiving solely whenever you’d prefer to.

Because the saying goes, the one type of birth control that’s 100% efficient is abstinence. “More often than not, birth controldoes work, however ‘accidents’ can occur,” Dolan says.

Condoms, birth control pills, intrauterine gadgets (IUDs), and different strategies often work 80% to greater than 90% of the time. And everlasting contraception, like female sterilization or male vasectomy, has a failure price of lower than 1%.

In the event you use contraception mistaken, your probabilities of getting pregnant go up. Generally it’s apparent that it didn’t work, like when a condom breaks. In that case, chances are you’ll need to take a second step, just like the over-the-counter “morning after” capsule. It will probably stop being pregnant as much as 5 days after unprotected intercourse. However in case you don’t discover an error like a small gap in a condom, or that you simply missed your each day capsule, you possibly can change into pregnant.

The one largest purpose for unplanned being pregnant isn’t ineffective contraception — it’s from a pair not utilizing anycontraception. “Some girls could not use contraception often, and others in no way,” says Maureen Phipps, MD, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Ladies and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island. “They might not prefer it, won’t have entry to it, or could also have a associate who does not need them to make use of it.”

Many instances, girls or their companions aren’t certain if they need a toddler or not, Phipps says. “They’re not planning [to have a baby], however they’re not actively making an attempt to keep away from being pregnant, both. And so they find yourself getting pregnant.”

Some girls don’t notice that they might get pregnant. In the event you’ve struggled with infertility prior to now, don’t have common durations, or are in perimenopause (the time interval earlier than menopause, which may result in gentle or irregular periods), it’s nonetheless doable so that you can conceive, although you don’t anticipate it.

In the event you nonetheless get your durations — even when they aren’t common — and also you don’t need to get pregnant, you “ought to preserve utilizing contraception,” Dolan says.

When you undergo menopause (that means you are now not menstruating and it’s been a full 12 months because you’ve had a interval), then it’s protected to imagine you possibly can have sex with out contraception and never get pregnant. You’ll nonetheless want to guard your self from sexually transmitted ailments, although.