Scarleteen

Hello Scarleteen team!

I'm coming here with a question about something that has been on my mind for a while, and I haven't been able to find answers for it anywhere.
Basically, I would REALLY love to have penetrative (penis in vagina) sex with my boyfriend. I'm planning on starting birth control soon, and we would also definitely be using condoms. My question is: how high is the risk of getting pregnant when using condoms + the pill together? Is there even a risk at all?

The reason I'm asking this is that I want to minimise the risk as much as humanly possible, so if you have any tips on how to minimise it even further, that would be awesome!!!

Thanks in advance for your answer

Hello Ray_yay,

There is technically a risk of pregnancy when you use condoms and birth control pills together, but it is extremely small: this method is 99.99% effective with perfect use, and at least 98.6% effective with typical use*. If you want to have PIV sex, it isn’t humanly possible to reduce this risk any further.

Since that’s the case, would you like to develop a plan for what you can do if you do get pregnant? It’s unlikely that you’ll have to use it, but it may be good to have on hand.

*These numbers came from this article: The Buddy System: Effectiveness Rates for Backing Up Your Birth Control With a Second Method

Also worth knowing that if you're using condoms that lubrication can help massively, because the only way condoms fail is by breaking, or falling off, both of which are going to be caused by friction.

I hope this helps! Our message boards are going to be closed now for the rest of the day, just FYI, but we'll be back tomorrow!