Birth control besides the pill?

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It is consistent - 85% is 85%, after all.

Besides, if they fail in the first year of use, then who would trust them after that? The father? The mother? The kid? (When he or she gets old enough, of course.)

I'll put it this way: I was a "rubber baby". No, that does not mean that I was a "bouncing baby boy*", it means that my parents were using condoms the night I was conceived (July 4, 1956). They got married about six weeks later. I'm the result of one of those 3 chances out of 20, as was their "forced" marriage. I've used condoms only 3 times in my whole life, resulting in two babies and a rash on "Ye Olde Thundre Rodde".

*And don't start with the "buggy bumper" jokes, either.

No, that's misinterpretation of the statistics.

The safety of condoms depends very much on how often you use them. The numbers above don't say how many times per year the surveyed women had sex, and it's probably hard to obtain reliable numbers, but I'm going to make some assumptions, so you will get the idea.

Let's assume that a woman has sex 50 times per year, relying exclusively on condoms. Let's further assume that the risk of failure per use is 0.5%. Then the chance that condoms will work 50 times in a row is

(99.5/100)^50 = 78%.

In other words, the risk of at least one failure during one year is 22%, based on the assumptions above. That of course doesn't equal the risk of pregnancy, but the number is in a similar region as the statistics.

Other contraceptives work differently. For example, if the pill works perfectly, then it prevents ovulation. If there is no ovum, pregnancy is not possible, regardless of the frequency of intercourse. If the pill doesn't work at all, then the risk is of course very high.

This means that when you only have sex a few times per year, using a condom may even be safer than the pill (in terms of contraception). Though it's not really relevant for me, I'd use on a method that blocks both the sperm and the ovum, such as pill + condom or hormone IUD (or even hormone IUD + condom, providing two unrelated barriers to the sperm).


Sorry about that. It means that you were extremely unlucky or you didn't use them right.

Black is white, day is night, pain is joy, wealth is poverty, death is life, and 85% is not 85% ... yeah ... got it.

I didn't mean to attack you.

Some "real data" I found:

The latter numbers fit, as (99.96/100)^86=96.6%.

Note that this is about "perfect use". If human error is taken into account, the numbers are much higher.

If you have a doctor or nurse practitioner you know and trust, the two of you may consider speaking with that person about your options. There may also be a women's clinic in your city, if you have not already looked one up. Those have government and private funding to provide family planning options and STD screening to the local population at a reduced cost or even for free.

Most also take insurance, if you do not meet the sliding income requirements for free treatment.

Anyway, they specialize in this sort of thing and are a great resource.

Having said that, I agree with a previous poster who suggested you try the NuvaRing. It's very non-invasive for a chemical/hormonal method and has a much smaller dosage than the pill. 35mg on the pill (most types, as an average) and only 5mg direct to the system via NuvaRing. Try it out, if you haven't. They're reliable. Some women with very high hormone levels still find that 5mg is too much estrogen and they get break-through bleeding within the first month or two.

If that happens, check back with your practitioner and try something else.

My personal opinion: stay away from implants of any type until you run out of other methods. Those can have some odd side effects and if you were having trouble on the pill my guess is you'll go the same way I did and have trouble on the heavy hitters like implants too. Also, the IUDs hurt like a son of a b***h going in. Easy as pie coming out, but going in? Nooooo thank you. And holy side effects, Batman!

I get the depo shot.

If you use a hormonal method, then it will always be a gamble with your health.

Maybe you would find it useful to try a calendar-based method of having sex without contraception such as condoms ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar-b ... ve_methods

Well, an IUD might be a good idea, possibly one without the hormones since I suspect hormonal birth control will only give you more headaches. If that's not actually the case, there's the nuva ring, the patch, and depo. I've tried the pill, the patch, the ring, and an IUD. Currently using condoms.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/contracept ... -coil.aspx

It might be something worth trying.

IUDs are notorious for being painful, causing cramping, or causing heavy bleeding (especially in people who've not been pregnant before) but you may be lucky, or think that's worth not having to use condoms ?

I informed myself, before I got my first copper IUD. 8% of the woman that tried copper IUD, needed to remove it because of feeling uneasy with it, medical causes...

8% is not "notorius" in my oppinion, because you will find as much woman as well, that tried the pill and canceled it because of side-effects. Additional they are now more advanced, then when I started with them, nowadays its more a small copper-pearlchain, instead of the straight IUD I have, that you sometimes can feel, when you are moving around, because of them being not flexible. (Its not hurting or anything, I simply feel it sometimes, when I do very bowing stretching-movements.)

The copperchain is called gynefix in german area.

Lots of women do indeed have problems with the contraceptive pill, which is no surprise really.

But that's neither here nor there when it comes to the IUD... which is indeed well known for causing the problems which I mentioned.

People with severe sensory issues cannot use the IUD much of the time. For those individuals, it can be a waste of time, money and energy. Being sick, then losing your job because you missed too much work, then being out $700 is not the way to go.

If you are able to take a week off in order to get the IUD, then I would recommend it. I would also recommend obtaining tranexamic acid from an overseas pharmacy beforehand. I'll give you my experience. I can't ever use a non-barrier form of contraception. It's the bipolar spectrum condition, the severe sensory issues, and other factors. But for the condom, one way to increase its efficacy besides the gels is to lubricate both sides. It also helps with sensation. Combining it with a cervical cap can boost efficacy as well.

The tl;dr version: Go for the IUD plus tranexamic acid and some Vicodin, and a week off. Also combine it with spermicidal gel for extra protection.

I got my IUD at an evening after work, and next day I was working again. Right now I am simply not sure, if we are talking about the same stuff, so I mean the T-shaped copper (As said new models are a copperchain, but I havent tested them.) thing you get permanently for three years inserted. So I do not understand what you mean with "not being able to use it much of the time". You dont remove it, it simply stays where it is, so either it is in, then it is in the whole time, or it is not in, then you dont have one, you cant decide it to use it only 50% of a day? Normally a doctor also measure the correct size before, because it is avalaible in different sizes, so that it really fits well. It also costed me only 280 EUR, that should be no 700 USD. My english is bad, so right now I believe we are talking about two different things and that I missmentioned the word IUD, there is a picture of the thing I talk about

Thank you so much to all who replied.
I have a GP appointment on Thursday to ask the GP what the best option is.

The GP has prescribed the mini pill. He said that other methods such as implants can cause infertility