Condoms and a little more

[devotion666.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone!

I recently quite taking my birth control pills for several reasons. The main ones being that I could no longer afford it and that I had the suspicion that it was affeceting my libido. Sadly enough, it was affecting my libido.
Anyhow, my problem is that I'm terribly paranoid about an unwanted pregnancy.
So here goes my question: Is there anything else, besides condoms, that I can use to help avoid pregnancy?
(apart from abstinance, of course XD)
I've been reading about spermicides, and that they "destroy" your vaginal wallsin the long run, leaving you more exposed to STD's and infections (like yeast)...

Thanks in advance for your help!

ps: Oh! I almost forgot, are there "thicker" types of condoms?

Comments

[archangelbeth]

Condoms aren't as good as HBC, actually. Their perfect use rate is in the high 90%, but that still means that -- depending on what site you go to -- something like 2 to 4 women, out of 100, are expected to get pregnant in a year of using condoms alone, presumably due to mechanical defects in the condoms themselves.

That's still 98 to 96 women who don't, though.

However, HBC's perfect use failure rate is around 2 in a thousand women. That's 998 people who don't get pregnant despite the pill.

On the other hand, personally? Condoms are what I and my spouse are comfortable with, and in 18 years of marriage, I've only been pregnant when we deliberately ditched the condoms for that year. For us, the emotional risks of HBC totally outweigh the possible benefits.

We also use Naturalamb brand lambskin condoms, mostly (though we're branching out to Lifestyles Skyns), which are reputedly stronger than latex condoms. They're also more expensive, not rated to protect against STIs (not an issue for us), and entirely anti-vegain.

For the OP: if condoms alone aren't enough for you, you can double-up with other methods. You can use FAM to learn your physical symptoms of impending ovulation and avoid PIV intercourse during your fertile times. You can add withdrawal to condom use. You could add the diaphragm or cervical cap to condom use, or use a contraceptive sponge (e.g., todaysponge.com); the latter might be a bit pricey if you're a one-sex-act-per-24-hours person, but if you are likely to have several interludes in that time-period, the price-per-sex-act on the sponge starts going down nicely.

Personally, the times we're not using condoms -- it's a Today sponge and a crude FAM/calendar method. I would not be at all comfortable relying on my use of the latter alone! And I'm not quite comfortable with a Sponge alone anymore (don't like its perfect use stats, I don't), but together, I'm fine.

Another thing I'd suggest... Well, I think it's a good idea in any case where there's sexual activity that could lead to pregnancy. Talk to your partner and have a Plan for what happens if it turns out he has teleporting ninja supersperm with medical devices to tickle an ovary into ovulation right then despite it being a non-fertile time. Sometimes knowing your options, and having researched the steps that those options would require, can be very settling -- it turns off fear of the unknown, and can provide a sense of "This would be hard, this might even suck, but here's the map; I can do this, step by step."

Luck!