Pill

[Allybannsiders]

If you're on week free from pills and you fool around two days before you get your withdrawal bleed (which did come) you're safe from pregnancy right?


The pill does fully protect you during pill free week correct?

[Heather]

Check it out!

From: http://www.scarleteen.com/article/advic ... ebo_period

So long as you take your pills as directed and on time, with the exception of a few medications or herbs that can interact with the pill, you're as covered as you get.

We get questions like this a lot, so in the interest of making sure you and everyone else understand your pill as best you can, let me explain how the pill works and thus, why it works just the same during the placebo period (the time you take or have the inactive pills) as it does during the other three weeks of your pill cycle.

If you understand how your menstrual and fertility cycle works when you aren't on oral contraceptives (and if you don't, read this before reading further), it's easier to understand how the pill works.

During a typical, unmodified fertility cycle, everything that happens is first driven by the signals your brain, via the hypothalamus and your pituitary gland, sends your reproductive system. Based on those actions, the release of an egg by the ovary during a normal cycle also releases hormones which direct the rest of the cycle, including the type of vaginal secretions you'll have for the best sperm mobility during the fertile period.

When you menstruate, it's because the egg released by the ovary either wasn't fertilized, or was fertilized but did not implant in the uterus, so your endometrium which has built up from all of those directives, to prepare for a fertilized egg implanting, then sloughs itself off. That's what your flow is during menses (which is also why sometimes it has little globs in it, rather than just fluid).

When you take the pill, the synthetic hormones send a different set of signals to your reproductive system entirely, so that you do not ovulate -- release that egg -- so that your vaginal secretions become and remain thicker (to make it tougher for sperm to get to an egg in the case something went amiss there), and so that that endometrial lining doesn't build up as much (in the case that the other two modes go awry, that would make it really tough for a fertilized egg to implant). That's three different ways to protect you from pregnancy, and even just one of those ways is often enough.

The reason why you don't have any extra risks during that placebo week is because of all of the things the pill has done in the three weeks prior, and which it will do once you start taking it again. During that week, you don't need pills because they've already prevented ovulation and fertilization, so you couldn't become pregnant during that period of time, as without all those preceding signals to be fertile, you can't suddenly become fertile in that week.

Sometimes this is more simply explained by saying that the pill tricks your body into thinking it already ovulated in a given cycle -- thinking that through every day of every cycle you're using the pill. In a normal fertility cycle, once ovulation has come and gone, a person is highly unlikely to become pregnant. Same goes for people using the pill.

[Allybannsiders]

Oh that helps a lot

Thank you!

[Heather]

Sure thing!

[Allybannsiders]

Sorry I was just rereading it again, could you just clarify so because my withdrawal bleed started as normal and is as heavy and lasting as long as it should then the event I was talking about should just be forgotten about because the pill would have prevented it?

[Allybannsiders]

The event in question also wasn't actual sex and there was no ejaculation

[Heather]

Ally, as we've said before, we won't engage with pregnancy fears in this way: we have set very clear limits and boundaries when it comes to that.

[Allybannsiders]

It's not really fear, it's curiousity (I'm 100% sure now what happened couldn't cause pregnancy) but if an sex act happens days before a withdrawal bleed then the withdrawal bleed happens and its normal and lasts as long as it should, then you restart the pill as normal, does that event be forgotten in the last cycle?

[Heather]

I don't know what you mean by forgotten: whether people remember sex or not, and for what reason, is all over the place, and whether or not people do around this, in particular, is also variable.

[Allybannsiders]

What I mean is would that event pre-withdrawal bleed pose a risk for the next cycle?

[Sam W]

When you get your period (or withdrawal bleed) after a risk -- so long as it comes around the time you expected it and looks and feels like your usual period -- it's usually safe to assume pregnancy did not or is not going to occur from that risk.

I'm going to go ahead and lock this thread now, as this conversation is still hovering far to close to pregnancy anxiety, something we've already set limits with you about.