Birth Control Doesn't Work!
 

I've got an experiment you can try in the comfort of your own home, that will prove this theory (without committing yourself to 18+ years of child raising).

Take three six sided dice. The magic number is 6-6-6. Now, mathematically, we have a 1/216 chance of throwing three 6's. That's a better than 99.5% chance of NOT throwing the magic number (similar to most birth control success rates). Now, toss the dice once. Did you get all three 6's? No? Well, I must have been wrong then. Do me a favor, though. Toss the dice 300 more times. Sooner or later, you're going to throw the magic number.

By the way, I'm a father of three. My first child disproved the pill. My second child disproved Depo Provera. And the third child was abstinence, which I'm still trying to figure out. Just kidding, he was Norplant.

Was your woman on any other medication during the time which may have had an effect on the pill? :hmm:

After the first two 'incidences', why still go the hormone route? After all, it didn't seem to work for you. Condoms? Vasectomy? Spermicides? Tubal ligation? There were other options out there.
I've been on the pill for 18 years , and the 3 times I got pregnant I had been off of the pill for at least 6 months. It does work in most cases.
It sucks to have that happen to you like it did. You're a very virile man! Thats some determined sperm you got there.

Yeah. And when it doesn't then there's a reason why it fails. Didn't you go see a doctor about this after "accident" Nr. 2?

So, do your kids at least have creative names like Tricy, Prov, and Norp? You've got to have some fun with it! ;)

You should have been buying lottery tickets rather than screwing around...

birth control works if taken the right way. its very sensitive to starting/stopping, or skipping pills. perhaps there's a problem with hormone levels and the pill in your mate? i've been on the pill for a number of years now and have had no problems whatsoever.

I set an appointment to get fixed when we found out about the third one. Because of everything they make you go through for that kind of operation, it took a while to get my appointment set for the actual operation (they were wary because I was only 25 at the time). Anyway, I got my date set for 19 Dec. My wife and I had decided we'd both get it done, for extra assurance. She'd have hers done after the delivery, so the healing would be concurrent. Anyway, my day came, and she went into labor. I had to call from the Emergency Room to reschedule my appointment. She had hers done, and we are good to go. All 3 of the kids are almost 3 years apart (one in Nov, one in Dec, and one in Jan) which makes it look like we planned it. Looking forward to when the last one gets out of diapers, then that part of our life is over (until grandkids come along). All of this just reinforces the fact that I can never, ever cheat on my wife (not like I'd ever do that anyway). My seed just seems WAY too eager to succeed.

I thought i read that the 99% success was based on a year of sex. So if you had sex for 100 years, you would mathematically be likely to get pregnant once.

However, I'm not sure about that at all.

At least you're in good humor about it all. :)

*nod*, that is the annual success rate.

If the drugs where taken properly, and there is nothing 'unusual' that prevented them from working, with a 99.5% chance of success, over 9 years, the chance of failing 3 times is...

9C3 * 200^-3 * .995^6
=
9*8*7/6 * 200^-3 * .995^6

roughly one in 100,000.

some women are completely unable to use birth control. its worked for me for the last two years, and you never factored in human error on the first! its the biggest contributor!

Actually, I believe that the number is based on an average of all users. Hence, the reason the success rate of condoms is so "low" is because of all the people who don't use condoms correctly.

Mojodragon, I guess you must be packing quite a powerful punch that can penetrate any contraceptive shield...

But on a more serious note, it could be that your wife's biochemistry just isn't compatible with birth control so that's why she got pregnant those three times. Or else she could've lied to you and purposefully messed it up because she secretly wanted kids.

of course i don't know you or your wife but this is my first thought after i read your post.

That is really bad luck, to have three children when your on medications that are suppose to prevent it.

Some antibiotics can reduce the effectiveness of birth control pills. Not all doctors think to tell you, and not every woman remembers to ask if they will interfere with the pill. I imagine depo-prevara & norplant would fall into this category as well.

Well, it would have been really hard for her to lie to me about the depo and norplant. I went with her to the doctor to get them done. And norplant is really hard to hide, you can feel the rods in her arm. It has all worked out for the best, though. I wouldn't trade my family for anything.

ok. good to hear a dad say that.

Wow, even though he was trying NOT to have children, it pains me to hear anyone talk about kids as "bad luck."

/Father of one adorable three-year old with a brother/sister on the way.

My wifes been on/off the pill/shot for about 7 years. It's worked so far.

The odds are that if you keep having sex for 100 years, then you'll have one kid. If you're unlucky, you'll have it in the first year :P. So no, birth control does not "work" 100%, but neither does it claim to. Unless you want to get yourself 'fixed' so you physically can't get pregnant (or impregnate anyone else), then DON'T HAVE SEX IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE KIDS.

Seems pretty obvious to me.

If 100 women took the pill as recommended for 1 year, one would get pregnant. That's the 99% odds of stopping conception.

"Accidental" pregnancies happen all the time. Its part of life. As mentioned in the post above, if you are so against getting pregnant, or getting someone pregnant, make some drastic precautions to avoid it.

99.5% is the rate for skilled condom users, I think. The overall rate is lower.

Now there's an overloadable phrase. "skilled condom users". "Girls like boys who have skills!"

As an aside, one in 100,000 happens. If 10,000 people have showed up to TFP, and if you had happened to you it you would have a 50% chance of mentioning it, then that's a 5% chance it got mentioned here! =)

5% isn't zero. But it isn't all that high. And things that get in the way of Birth Control (like biology, or other medications) are, probably, a more likely explanation.

May I ask WTF is a skilled condom user!? My steps are

1. Get hard
2. Open package (Trojan-ENZ and Ultra Pleasure/Durex Her Sensation)
3. Hold tip as I roll it down
4. Git er dun! :D

Am I skilled?

Wife, who's now a member, would like to change the original post... The first was NOT the pill - he was condoms with spermicide. The second was Norplant - in fact, he was also a twin and I miscarried one before they realized I was pregnant and took the damn rod out. (The surgery to remove Norplant is quite gruesome - I thought mojo was going to faint!) The third was Depo Provera and I've been on four or five different kinds of pills - had miscarriages on two of them. The others seemed to work pretty well, and we did combine methods more than once. Honestly, it looks like just not having sex is our only option. (as if that could ever happen!) My tubes were successfully tied and our littlest is three years old... Nothing yet. Honestly, though, I just seem to _think_ the word and I am. It wouldn't surprise me terribly if I still manage to get pregnant. If so, mojo will have to go get snipped. Maybe with both of us "fixed" we'll be finished with child bearing. It's a good thing we wanted a large family to begin with or we'd be pretty stressed... And I, Mrs. Totally Predictable Monthly, haven't bled since February. *takes a deep breath* I would be willing to possibly believe human error on the first, but we didn't have any busted condoms (or "unskilled"? usage??). And having thyroid issues on and off would also lead me to believe that my chemistry just wouldn't allow the hormonally based methods to work. I would never lie to my mojo, just as an aside. And it's not as if the kids weren't wanted. We did plan to have a large family - we just didn't plan on six miscarriages, a still birth, or the fact that being pregnant is so hard on me physically. We also didn't plan on having them that early or that close together. We're still planning on adopting and are foster parents. We love our kids and have a beautiful family that I wouldn't trade for anything! We both kind of shrugged and figured it was meant to happen. I'll tell you, I've had ten or twelve different doctors all across the country shaking their heads (taking more blood!) and trying to make certain I'm not going to sue for malpractice. *grin* As far as sheer numbers go, the two or three different pills I mentioned covered the MOST amount of time pregnancy-free. SO it wasn't _all_ hormones my body hates, just a few. Or perhaps those times were also times in which I had a happier thyroid? *shrugs*

This thrread makes me scared :mad:

First of all, most birth control pills are more like 99.9% effective, thought it's generally considered that under normal circumstances, if taken properly, it's pretty much 100%, all the time.

Secondly, your method of math with odds is incorrect. If you were correct, it would mean a child every 100 instances of sex, statistically. That is not correct.

What 99.9% means is the chance that, at any particular single event of intercourse, that's the odds. You can have sex 1 million times, and your chances of conception are still < 0.1% each individual time, regardless of how much you do it.

And for those with "mistakes"... everyone's body is different, and sometimes shit happens no matter what you try and do to prevent it chemically. You can't use experience to fault the pill.

My girlfriend has been on the pill for 5 years or more since we've been dating (exclusively). There has been a handful (yes, I can count them on one hand) of times that she has forgotten to take the pill.

Only twice has she forgotten to tell me at all, and both times although we were very frightened of the prospect of becoming parents before we expected to, we still have yet to be parents.

The pill, in our case, has had nearly five nines uptime in effectiveness. Honestly, in my opinion, I would say something had to have happened in your case to have 3 kids because the pill "seemed to have failed" 3 times.

I will say though... that the very next time that my girlfriend and I have sex, and she tells me beforehand she forgot to use the pill, we use the condom for the rest of the month (she and I are committed and want to get married and have kids, so all of you who think this is a bad system to use, please refrain!) until her cycle starts again.

In our case, it has never failed. YMMV. Or so says the doctors, pill warnings, everyone in general. The ony way to stop? Quit bumping uglies. Seriously. =)

I know this thread is very old, but hey, sex hasn't changed since then and I figure someone might get some use out of it. =)

Hang on. What we're dealing with in this thread is a classic example of the Gambler's Fallacy.

That 99.7% effective is for each act of intercourse. It's a logical fallacy to think that the remaining .3% builds up to an inescapable preganacy after long enough. It's just like a guy at a slot machine thinking he's due a win. Doesn't work like that.

Thanks guys for pointing out the proper way to interpret statistics!

When I was on the pill/ring/whatever, I was told NUMEROUS times that IF a woman takes the pill CORRECTLY and doesn't take anything that will interfere with it (ie antibiotics) and is properly screened for preexisting medical conditions that might interfere with the uptake of the hormones (like the thyroid thing), then there is no way she can get pregnant. The pill makes it physically impossible to have the sperm reach the egg and do all that crazy little dancing that they do (watch The Miracle of Life on Discovery sometime, you'll see what I mean).

Personally, I think that if you're on the pill and having sex, and are still nervous about it and use a backup method, you're not as ready to be committing yourself to that person as you think you are. IMHO.

Ehh, I dunno. I myself am very damn certain I don't want kids, and I have everything necessary to avoid it, because I don't want them under any circumstances whatsoever. Has *nothing* to do with commitment level.

Fortunately, I have been successful. I still wish I could get fixed myself, but that has as much to do with other things (no cycle!) as pregnancy avoidance.

Yeah, what? I don't think not wanting to have kids has anything to do with commitment :hmm:

I agree with Sultana, some people just don't want kids; it has nothing to do with their commitment level. The lurkbastids seem pretty committed to me, and they certainly don't want kids.

Well, I think your opinion totally ignores people who don't want children as a fact of life, not as a momentary decision for convenience. There are a lot of people for whom having a child is not a plan, at all, ever. To say that these relationships are somehow less committed than the ones with people who want kids at some point is completely ridiculous.

We're not talking about a couple of horny, hump-happy 16 year olds worrying about getting knocked up, we're talking about serious adults discussing the possibilities of their birth control methods.

I don't believe there's even a need to restrict this to couple who never plan to have kids. Abaya and I don't plan to have kids at this time, though we might decide to do so at some point later on. It still makes sense for us to be extra-careful with potential pregnancies, even though we are very much committed to each other; it's just not in our plans to have children at this time.

Sage, no offense to ya, but I gotta disagree... as ktspktsp said, we are very committed to each other but we just aren't in the business of having kids (or abortion, or adoption) at all right now.

That may change, but until the day we are *sure* we can handle the increased risk... well, we really don't mind taking a few extra seconds to use a condom each time, in addition to my Ring. Condoms are really not a big deal for us, I guess... they become quite normal, if one takes the right attitude. We've been doing that for two years and it's become second-nature.

That said, if we somehow got pregnant while using the Ring AND a condom... well, hell, I suppose it would be a divine intervention to go ahead and have kids... :lol:

So a friend of a friend...

Had their 5th kid after their 2nd vasectomy.

Abaya that's exactly where we are - had to be divine intervention! LOL Like I said, it's a good thing we wanted to have a large family and were ready and willing to accept the new-comers! Especially with them "occurring" almost EXACTLY three years apart! That's closer than we wanted to have children originally (we had a whole life-plan with kids inserted where we thought we wanted to have them, etc... we were SO young!) but apparently we didn't have a lot of say-so about it. Maybe we weren't as careful as we could have been, but I don't see how having five rods installed in your arm is being lax. I honestly thought I was covered... And consequently, Yakk, they require a class before you get your tubes tied to make sure you "really want to" especially if you're obviously pregnant. It coincided with the guys' vasectomy class, so I ran into a guy who was there for his third. He firmly believes that his wife is not cheating on him - the first vasectomy healed as did the second, apparently. He was there for another one... Seems they'd try something different, but who am I to talk? ;)

Wife on the pill about 14 years.

One kid.

Planned.

Lots and lots and lots of sex.

Yeah Yeah, I'm married to a woman who couldn't have kids, and we got 2, both on Birth contol. LOL it happens.

All those who were on BC when you/wife got pregnant.. were you also using a barrier method (condom/diaphragm) simultaneously? I know some people think the whole point of going on BC is to have sex w/out a barrier, but if you're on BC to definitely prevent pregnancy, I'd say the hormones alone are not enough. It's not 100% proven, especially with "regular use" (not "perfect use"). Humans make mistakes, forget to take the pill on time, have bodies that don't like artificial hormones, etc. Hence I consider it a good idea to use an additional barrier method if you definitely DO NOT want unplanned pregnancies... but that's just super-paranoid me. :D

I do wonder if the medical establishment (or at least BC pharmaceutical companies) doesn't just have us all hoodwinked into thinking BC is 100% foolproof... or they just mean well, but underestimate human error. :rolleyes: E.g. that whole shake-up about the Patch (high hormone levels) was unbelievable... I use the Ring, which is also fairly new, and wonder if anything bad will come out of it in a few years? Meh, we shouldn't believe everything they tell us, that's my point. Take whatever precautions necessary to protect your own interests as a person and a couple: for me, that means BC + condom! :thumbsup: