Condom broke?!

[Kasi]

Hi!! So my boyfriend and I had sex today and the condom broke, I immediately felt it and told him to pull out, to which he did (he’s great)
But my concern is I’ve already ovulated which is concerning? He didn’t finished or anything and pulled at literally 1 millisecond after it broke, I am 8 days away from my period and I last ovulated 5-11 and my peak day was the 11th.
Any advice helps! Thanks everyone!

[Heather]

Hello, Kasi.

I want to start by sharing a reply I just made to someone else here who also assumed they knew when they had been ovulating: viewtopic.php?p=78868#p78868. Chances are, you don't actually know when that happens for yourself, not unless you're doing real charting and interpretation, and have been doing it for at least a few months. Do you chart your fertility and have the education to know how to interpret that, or are you basing this off what a menstrual tracking app is telling you? If it's the latter, know that apps that only track your periods can't actually give you that information accurately (and it remains true garbage that some claim to).

I also want to make sure you know that if and when you ever do actually know when ovulation has happened, once someone is past ovulation and in the period before their period, that's actually when they are *least* likely to become pregnant. <3

If you don't want to take any bigger a pregnancy risk than you have to, and you want to be as cautious as possible, my best advice would be to obtain some emergency contraception if possible. Because he withdrew right away, and he didn't ejaculate, it does sound unlikely to me that you'd have a real risk here, but if EC/Plan B is available to you and that's something you want to use for peace of mind and to make sure your risk is as low as possible, that's what I'd suggest.

Lastly, it's usually pretty easy to keep condoms from breaking, but sometimes folks just don't know what that means, So, for the future, making sure that you are using them with plenty of lube (from a bottle or tube, not just what comes on the condom or your body creates), that room is left at the tip, and that they are within their expiry date combined will generally prevent breaks. It's usually lack of enough lubrication that tends to be the biggest culprit, which is not only easy to prevent, but if a condom got so dry it breaks, it probably didn't feel great for anyone either!