Having sex before stopping the pill

[MigueLMichaeL]

My girlfriend and I have decided to take a break from the pill for a few months or so and I was wondering if we can still have sex. It is her 16th day out of 21. She'll stop once we have completed the pack. Will we be safe?

[Heather]

Not if it's intercourse and without another method of birth control, no. You'll be having unprotected sex with a big risk of pregnancy. So, you'll need to use a condom or some other method if you both don't want to take that risk.

It doesn't matter what day it'll be: it takes months for someone to have predictable cycles after stopping the pill and then months after that to have enough data to chart with to have any idea of when someone ovulates.

Can I ask why your girlfriend is stopping the pill for a few months? Is that something she wants to do?

[MigueLMichaeL]

The pills are making her even more depress than before due to the quarantine. By the way, we had sex yesterday since we thought we still have a week to go plus we're protected by the pill for at least the first few days of the last break week and then we're done. Are we protected? Wouldn't the sperm die before she ovulates?

[MigueLMichaeL]

We are about to take a break from it. She's still taking it until she finishes the entire pack.

[Heather]

I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you saying you had intercourse while she was still using the pill? If so, she would have had the protection the pill offers.

If she was not on the pill (including if we has already stopped, because it is only safe during the placebo week IF the person starts their next pack on time), then no, she did not have its protection. If she wants protection after the fact, she can either obtain emergency contraception or, depending on her brand of pill, use her pill in a specific dose as emergency contraction.

I saw you have another thread where you're having a lot of pregnancy scares, so I'm going to go with Amanda's last response to you and encourage you to take a break from kinds of sex that create these fears in you or, at the very least, not intentionally have high-risk sex when a) you know you get scared already even when it isn't high risk, and b) you know you do not want a pregnancy. Too, if doing the things you actually can like backing up with condoms isn't something you feel able to do, but you're having pregnancy scares, I think it's probably really important you take a little time to try and sort out what you're making the choices you are here. They don't seem in line with what would actually be best for anyone, you know?

[MigueLMichaeL]

I am really sorry if my phrasing is really weird since English isn't my first language but I will try and explain again (I'm sorry). At the moment my girlfriend is still taking the pill (16th day out of 21) and will stop when we have finished the entire pack of pills so she will still take the birth control pills for five more days. After that we will take a break from it.


My main concern would be is that would she be able to ovulate on the first three days of her period week? And would she get pregnant?

[Heather]

No need to apologize for that: I'm sorry we don't have more multi-lingual folks here to make it easier for everyone!

I understand. So long as she is on the pill, she will have the level of protection the pill offers, but ONLY so long as she is still taking it. So, if she stops taking it after this pack and does not start again, after her last day of her active pills, she will not be protected from pregnancy until she or -- even better! -- both of you use a different method of birth control.

[MigueLMichaeL]

So does that mean that she is protected until the first 3 days of placebo week? What I'm thinking about is the survivability of sperm inside of her. Like what if she ovulates and sperm is still inside her?

[Heather]

Again: she is protected by her pill ONLY so long as she is taking active pills, unless she is going to start a new pack after this one.

Ultimately, looks like you have yourself in another scare here, but there’s nothing to do about that for sex that already happened. What you can do now is make different choices moving forward to prevent another scare, like not having this kind of sex again for now, or adding at least a condom to the mix if and when she finds another method of contraception to use that she wants. Being scared about this now is your brain telling you to do this differently moving forward. It’s telling you you don’t feel good about this the way you have been. Make sense?