Hello, I have a question. I had unprotected sex with my girlfriend about 40 hours ago, and ejaculated inside her, so she bought the morning after pill and used it now, shes currently at work. I know its meant for being used after sex, but lets say after work in about 4hours she came by my house and we had intercourse, and I ejaculated inside of her, would she not be able to get pregnant because she just took the pill? Let me know… thanks!
This is a question to ask a doctor or pharmacist. The stakes are much too high to base your actions on the advice of a bunch of anonymous people on a message board.
She would still be able to get pregnant. Plan B is not 100% effective, so it’s possible she’ll still get pregnant from the first time, adding to that chance with another unprotected encounter will only increase the risk of pregnancy.
Plan B is 95% effective if taken within 24 hours after unprotected intercourse, and 61% effective if taken 48-72 hours after. There are no numbers I can find on effectiveness taking it *before *intercourse, because it’s not approved for such use.
Sorry, this is not a foolproof excuse to ride bareback. If you don’t want to wear condoms, you need to talk with her about other birth control methods. Of course, there’s only one other that also prevents the spread of sexually transmitted disease, and that’s the female condom, which can be very difficult to find in many areas.
Plenty of good stuff here.
It’s worth noting that the odds of getting pregnant from a single act of unprotected sex is already fairly low. It depends on the individual and where she is in her cycle, of course. Your average swing is about 3-5% chance of pregnancy, but at the peak of her cycle the odds are more like 30-50%. Adding in the 61% effectiveness that WhyNot relates, this drops the odds down to something around 10-20% at the worst.
If she is impregnated, there’s also a 25% that she’ll miscarry within the next 6 weeks, so that 10-20% drops down again to 8-15%.
The odds are on your side by quite a bit, but even still you’re better off to wear a raincoat or change out for the kinkier stuff.
That morning-after pill cost her in the neighborhood of $50, not covered by insurance.
As someone who’s had to make use of it, I can say that it’s worth every penny.
Depends where she lives. In Québec, the typical cost is between 20-30$, with most private insurance plans (work, student plans) covering whatever portion of costs they usually do for prescription meds (some require patients to pay a percentage, others require a flat rate…that depends on the insurance plan). Plan B is free on the government plan for women under the age of 18 or for full-time students under the age of 25.
While I knew that the province allowed women to obtain Emergency Oral Contraceptives directly from a pharmacist without needing to see a doctor, I’m glad to have just learned that the pharmacy consultation for EOC is covered by the provincial plan (the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec).
Invest in a box of condoms, or make sure she goes on the pill/some form of positive contraception.
Actually, IMHO, any female who is of breeding age, and is sexually active should be on positive contraception, or come equipped with her own condoms and MAKE the guy use them. Unplanned pregnancy is stupid and can ruin lives.
Speaking of which, I do hope the OP is willing to stop back in after he finds out how things went.
Doc, we’re pulling for you, your girlfriend, and any kids you decide to have at some undisclosed point in the far future.
From what I recall reading, with no personal experience:
Plan B is actually a massive dose of hormones. A woman’s cycle is a sequence of hormone releases that trigger various phases. Plan B triggers the phase “no fertilized egg implanted, get ready for next period”. If any ovulation were about to happen, this stops it. If a fertilized egg is about to implant, this causes the uterine wall to swell just as it does in the days before a period. The egg will find it difficult to implant in this and so will eventually die and be flushed out.
It may also bring on a period, reschedule periods, etc. She has to really want to use this pill, and it should not be done too often. Use real protection instead. if you search, there is a web site that describes the same effect to be gotten by large doses of regular pills (3 to 7 pills, depending on brand.) As with any medical advice - (a) do you trust anything you read on the internets, and (b) doctors spend 4+ years training for a reason, and © you only get one body, don’t do stupid things with it.
The “swell to prevent implantation” process explains why the efficacy falls off the longer she waits. If the egg has begun implanting before the swelling takes effect, she may still end up pregnant. One explanation I read said it could stop 85% of pregnancies that would have happened; since the odds of pregnancy are about 25% at the right time of the month, the ods go down significantly. So the human body can do all sorts of funny things and nothing is 100%.
Going at it a few days after - sperm can live 2 or 3 days, possibly up to 5, in the uterus / fallopian tubes waiting for an egg. So if she happened to ovulate say, 4 to 6 days after takling the pill, the swelling would go down within the next few days and there is a chance that she could get (un)lucky and a repeat performance with Plan B is not advised…
Yes- invest in serious protection from now on…
Here are the equivalents in regular birth control pills, which are usually covered by insurance in the U.S.