HBC-- double the chances?

[sofriggencoolx.livejournal.com]

Is it true you have double the chances of getting pregnant after quitting the pill?

I just stopped taking mine due to the lovely side effects and a friend told me that. As her knowledge on sex education is sometimes lacking, It sounds like BS. But to cure my paranoia I figured it be better to ask here?

Comments

[archangelbeth]

Well, double from what? From the normal 80-85% or so? I don't think so! Irregular ovulation is very common after discontinuing pill use, so overall the chances of pregnancy are probably a bit lower, on the average.

Double from pill use? Considering that the pill is something like 95% effective with typical use, then going from 5% to 10% would be "double"... A bit iffy, though, and would probably have to presume typical use of condoms or contraceptive sponges.

However, if you discontinue pill use and do not pick some other contraceptive method immediately, you do risk ovulating unexpectedly -- and potentially falling pregnant if you've been having totally unprotected sex with ejaculation in the vagina.

Does that help?

[ethuil.livejournal.com]

In trying to work out where your friend could've gotten this idea from, I looked around a bit and did find a few references to double ovulation being common when coming off HBC - but these were only in comments and I couldn't find any trustworthy resources for these. I figured it was worth mentioning as it seemed a possible reason though :)

When coming off HBC, often people experience abnormal cycles (by which I mean differing from your usual non-HBC regulated pattern, rather than not 28-days exactly!). You might ovulate within two weeks or it might take a couple of months.

[speshal-kay.livejournal.com]

agree with those above. plus, i've heard of many stories of people going off the pill to TRY to become pregnant and don't have such good luck. i don't have stats or anything, but that happened to a friend of mine, took her forever to become pregnant after going off the pill because everything goes back to its pre-pill ways.

[inkster.livejournal.com]

I don't know for sure what the stats are, but I do know that my Fertility doctor suggested one time when we were investigating any possible reasons for my infertility that I could go on the pill for a month and come off it because there's a "slightly increased" chance of pregnancy when coming off of it.

I personally didn't do it because coming off the pill way back when threw me into an emotional tailspin with depression so bad I couldn't even think about having a baby at the time, not to mention that any time they told me I had an increased chance, it never worked, but there might be some truth to it? I'm just not sure if twice as likely is the right stat for that.

[nickelshoe.livejournal.com]

Last year I told a coworker that my doctor had tried to put me on birth control even though I wanted a baby, and my coworker thought it was an awesome idea because she was under the same impression as your friend that coming off it you're extra fertile. I didn't really believe it, and did some googling to see what came up. The only thing I could really find was that the ovulation suppression helped preserve fertility in some women with reproductive issues--it didn't really increase it, just kept it from decreasing or something.