Contraceptives

LegacyUser

Hi, I was wondering would it be common practice to use condoms while on the pill? Just wondering how effective the pill is and is it necessary to use other contraceptives also?

Talliesin

As a contraceptive the pill is very effective.

As a prophylactic against the transmission of infections it is has 0% efficacy.

The combination of the oral with barrier contraception is therefore a common combination, since the two back each other up in terms of contraception (they both have to fail to work for a pregnancy to occur) and the barrier contraception prevents infection.

LegacyUser

I know that the pill doesnt offer any protection against STD's, but we are more worried about my girlfriend becoming pregnant. What i was just wondering is would it be common practice to use both together to prevent pregnancy? As the pill is C.99% effective, so if you had sex 100 times you would get pregnant one of those times ? The reason i ask is my girlfriend has gone on the pill a couple of weeks ago and since then we have had sex a number of times without a condom, which feels way better for the both of us but i was wondering can we continue doing this or is it just a matter of time before she becomes pregnant. Is it possible to use the pill with another form of contraceptive other than a condom ?

Victor

Unreg345 wrote:

I know that the pill doesnt offer any protection against STD's, but we are more worried about my girlfriend becoming pregnant.

Are you certain neither of you have an STI? Have you been tested?

What i was just wondering is would it be common practice to use both together to prevent pregnancy?

Yes it is.

As the pill is C.99% effective, so if you had sex 100 times you would get pregnant one of those times ?

That not how the percentages are worked however. However the percentages are dependent on the pill being used properly (every day at the appropriate time) and not being compromised (illness, other medication, etc.)

Is it possible to use the pill with another form of contraceptive other than a condom ?

There are others, e.g. spermicides but I'm not up to speed on the details.

hunnymonster

The way the doc explained it to me was that the effectivness (sp?) of the various methods of contraception is not worked out per ejaculation but rather based on the number of resultant pregnancies in a year. (i.e. 99% effective means 1% of people using this method correctly would end up pregnant in a year) It did seem a bit strange at the time but he was a family planning expert.

I use the pill only partly because I need the hormones anyway, partly because it's convenient for spontaneous sex, and I'm pretty organised never forget to take them. What's right for you depends very much on your stuation.

Talliesin

Unreg345 wrote:

I know that the pill doesnt offer any protection against STD's, but we are more worried about my girlfriend becoming pregnant.

Why not?
That's not rhetorical. I'm not saying "Why not?" to imply that you should be worried about it, but more "why not?" because you should be able to answer that question well or you're just stumbling into a potentially bad situation.

Unreg345 wrote:

What i was just wondering is would it be common practice to use both together to prevent pregnancy?

Yes, because they offer protection in completely different ways they don't interfere with each other and therefore they would have to both fail for an unwanted pregnancy to occur.

Unreg345 wrote:

As the pill is C.99% effective, so if you had sex 100 times you would get pregnant one of those times ?

Not quite. Given that unprotected sex doesn't always result in a pregnancy that isn't quite how the math works. On the other hand things that can upset the pills working reduce that 99% figure quite a bit.

Unreg345 wrote:

The reason i ask is my girlfriend has gone on the pill a couple of weeks ago and since then we have had sex a number of times without a condom, which feels way better for the both of us but i was wondering can we continue doing this or is it just a matter of time before she becomes pregnant.

There's a reason why safer sex educators have stopped using the term "safe sex" and moved to using "safer sex" a long time ago.
If you want to have a 100% guarantee that you will not end up with an unwanted pregnancy then you're going to need to not have penetrative sex with any woman who hasn't had a hysterectomy.

The rest is a matter of likelihoods.

If your girlfriend is using the pill correctly (including being aware of when any illness could perhaps have stopped it working) then the chances of her becoming pregnant is very low.

If you and your girlfriend are monogamous and have a very good reason for believing yourselves free from STIs (essentially a matter of not having had any other sexual partners since your last test) then the chances of a sexually transmitted infection are very low (not entirely gone, one of you may not be as monogamous as the other thinks, an infection could have been missed in the testing, and there are infections that are transmitted sexually but which one of you could have caught through non-sexual contact).

Because of this you could make a reasoned decision to just use the pill and enjoy the fact that you do find it better. You will be increasing the odds of an unwanted pregnancy, but it will still be quite unlikely.

Nobody can really advise on the final decision here, that has to be up to you and your partner. All we can advise on is the information you use to make that decision and advice on how to think about it rather than what to think about it.

Unreg345 wrote:

Is it possible to use the pill with another form of contraceptive other than a condom ?

Yes. There are a lot of choices beyond condoms http://www.ifpa.ie/contraception/#contraception those that isn't chemical/hormonal based (i.e. that doesn't work in the same way as the pill anyway) will add to the protection you get from the pill.