Becoming sexually active with a partner is a big moment in anyone’s life. At the beginning, it can feel like a new, very enjoyable world has opened up, but like any other coming-of-age moment, it has its ups and downs. For many people Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB), one of these more frightening aspects of sex and intimacy is the potential of becoming pregnant.
Note: This article is written for the benefit of people who do not want a pregnancy. If you are seeking guidance with conceiving or managing a pregnancy, we recommend consulting IVF Australia instead!
Key takeaways
Pregnancy scares are panic-inducing, but panicking won’t help you. There are several other things that will help:
- Understanding the criteria (contact with sperm, ovulation, etc.) that actually need to be met for a pregnancy to occur;
- Understanding your options in terms of next steps: prevention, diagnosis, termination, or carrying to term;
- Identifying and relying on your support system (this could be friends, relatives, a doctor, or anyone you know and trust); and
- Having a plan in the back of your mind so that when you’re scared, you always know what you’re supposed to do next.
The information gap
Pregnancy can be a scary possibility for many reasons, and it’s often made even scarier because of the amount of misinformation or unhelpful statistics that we hear about the chances of pregnancy. You might have heard things like this from friends:
- “You can get pregnant from precum.”
- “You can be on the pill and use condoms and still get pregnant.”
We share these kinds of details with each other because our education systems and parents often don’t give us information about how our bodies work. We want to protect each other. The bullet points above aren’t inaccurate, but they are incomplete. Incomplete knowledge leads to panic, and panic can lead to bad decision-making.
Here are some other facts:
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- It’s not that easy to get pregnant. Couples who want to conceive often need to rigorously track ovulation cycles to identify the best chance of getting pregnant. This is because there is a short window of time right before and during ovulation when the chances of conception are highest, but chances are much lower outside of this window because an egg only survives for 12-24 hours without fertilisation (Natural Cycles).
- It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll get pregnant from precum. So unlikely, in fact, that we couldn’t find any hard statistics on how common this phenomenon is. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful about unprotected sex, as chances of getting pregnant from precum aren’t zero (not to mention, there are STDs to think about!) However, it does mean that you don’t have to fly off the handle if you think your vagina came into contact with precum.
- No form of contraception is 100% effective, but all of them are extremely effective if used correctly. Some things to think about might be: was a condom used, and was it on correctly? If you take oral contraceptives, have you been taking them on time every day with no missed doses? Note that this is why the “pull out method” isn’t recommended – it’s risky because it relies 100% on your partner being able to judge the exact moment before orgasm to pull out of you, rather than being science-backed.
At some point or another, many of us in the Herd have panicked thinking there’s a chance we may be pregnant. It’s not fun. If you’re in that position now, here are some steps you can take to make everything feel a little less terrifying.
What does it take to actually get pregnant?
If you’ve had semen directly enter your vagina during your fertile window, there could be a chance of pregnancy, in which case your customised Pregnancy Panic Plan (see below) can help you figure out what to do next. But if the above criteria aren’t applicable to you, there’s no need for immediate panic: your chances of pregnancy are probably quite low.
There’s one easy way to get an answer, which is by doing a pregnancy test. The catch is that home pregnancy tests will generally only pick up a pregnancy a few weeks after conception. That means that even if you run to the pharmacy and buy one of each brand the day of the unprotected sex, you won’t get accurate results. In other words, by the time a pregnancy test can pick up a positive result, you may have already got your period anyway!
So, the next question you need to ask yourself is, do I want to panic about this for the next 2-3 weeks, or do I want to think about solutions instead?
Your Pregnancy Panic Plan (PPP)
Part of why pregnancy scares are so… well, scary, is because we feel like we don’t have any control over what’s happening in our bodies. You can regain some of that feeling of control by (a) figuring out your degree of actual risk, and (b) planning how to handle the next few weeks.
Stuff from this form made in-house instead of through google: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1dqSfbWXTmRk6RWRHZsWec_H-9QEzxmiEDzvJfnxrzVw/edit
Now what?
Now, unfortunately, you have to wait. But hopefully, armed with a PPP, you’re no longer sitting around in a cold sweat of anxiety. Instead, you’re a well-informed young woman with a plan of action, and you’re equipped to go out and smother the panic before it gets out of hand.
Questions? Comments? We love to hear from you, so please let us know how we can make the Herd better, smarter, and safer.
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