I’m an idiot - do I need Plan B?

[Ecarg92]

Hey guys! I am having a bit of an issue and I have no idea who else to ask besides y’all! I used to frequent these boards when I was young and it’s wonderful to see you all still going strong! Thank you for all you do!

I am on the pill and was on an antibiotic earlier this month for a UTI. My fiancé and I had sex as we usually do (no condom or withdrawal, we are both monogomous and STD free) and then I remembered I was on the antibiotic. I know most aren’t found to actually interact with the pill but we aren’t really wanting any children right now so I figured I would take the emergency contraception I keep “just in case”. What I had was Ella and so I took it and went along with life as usual.

It caused me to have a pretty heavy bleed and I had the flu so we didn’t have sex for a while. Probably a week? I’d say this whole incident started 10 days or so ago, maybe more. I got the antibiotic on 2/27/18 so it could be closer to two weeks. Anyway, we are on vacation and had sex last night as usual as I had been off my antibiotics for over a week (no condom/withdrawal). I started spotting again so I looked up some information on Ella and found out it can make the pill less effective! I had NO idea and I’m usually so good with stuff like that. I have one more pill in this pack (tonight) and I plan to skip my placebo week since I am on vacation. Do I need to grab another pack of emergency contraception since my pill protection should be compromised? And if so does it need to be Ella or can it be regular Plan B?

Thanks in advance guys!

Edit: Just talked to an OBGYN on a telehealh app (HealthTap). He said since I am at the end of my pill pack it’s unlikely I have ovulated and that EC wouldn’t be necessary. He also said that Ella puts the note about making the pill less effective more for legal reasons than anything and since I bled pretty heavy after the Ella it means it works. Does that sound right to you all? I know you aren’t doctors, just wanting to see what you all think.

[Sam W]

Hi Ecarg and welcome to Scarleteen,

It sounds like the first step would be to take a quick look at this article (if you haven't already) to see if the antibiotic you were on is know to interact with the pill: Something You Can Worry About Less: Interference and Hormonal Birth Control . If it is known to decrease the effectiveness, I'd suggest calling a pharmacist and asking how long after stopping the antibiotics that side effect lasts. It may be that by the most recent time you'd had sex your protection was back to normal levels. If it turns out there was still a chance of your pill being compromised, then if you wanted to decrease the risk of pregnancy as much as possible emergency contraception would be a good next step. Does that all sound doable?

As an aside, you've actually been taking a lot of good steps to take care of the situation, like taking Ella the first time and calling the OBGYN, which is awesome.