I’m pretty sure I didn’t confuse days with months, because I remember that a woman is fertile for 4-5 days per month, although not by the same amount each day. Of course, I can’t back up my claim, as I don’t have that book anymore. And in trying to find it on the web, I found your 25% figure as well, which I’m prepared to accept.
Thinking about it, I may have heard the twice per year figure from a person I knew, and I’m conflating it with what I read. In which case, maybe it was just more ignorance being spread around.
The reason, BTW, that I did that research was for a RPG. A female character wanted to get jiggy with a stable boy, and I wanted to be able to roll for the riskiness of her doing so.
Women can get pregnant any time. Hell, we can get pregnant when we’re already pregnant. It’s just that it’s more likely at some times than at others. This is why we have artificial birth control, like condoms and pills and such like. I got pregnant while I was on the pill after having sex during my period.
As elucidator says, Mother Nature’s agenda is not necessarily congruent with ours.
My dumbass stepdaughter once proudly told me that she didn’t have to worry about pregnancy because her latest squeeze had “a low sperm count”. I resisted the nearly overwhelming urge to tell her it was his - and her - IQ count that was low, and confined myself to “You DO know it only takes one, right?”.
Lots of ifs and buts in your litany there. Most women go back to work within weeks of giving birth. I know I only get enough leave to get out of the hospital, and then it’s whatever sick time I have saved. That’s hardly going to allow round the clock breast feeding for 6 months. It’s the nature of the modern workplace. Thus, it’s highly unlikely that most people are breastfeeding exclusively, nursing totally on demand. I know this woman wasn’t. So that pretty much invalidates your rather confident assertion that the woman I mentioned in the OP wasn’t wrong. Maybe she wasn’t lying, maybe she was just ignorant, but she also said she couldn’t get pregnant and fucking did, so I think she just wanted to get pregnant again, or just did not want to use birth control, and went from excuse to excuse (“oh, let’s not use protection, I can’t get pregnant! Shit, I did… um, I’m breast feeding, so let’s keep not using birth control…”) Good thing she apparently has low fertility or my poor friend would have 3 kids now instead of 1, which is going badly enough.
You could, but then I’d just call you a santimonious bitch who is way overreacting to some perceived offense that happened only in her mind. So it’s your call if you want to say that to me and derail an otherwise civil thread into name calling.
Your fabulous fact about breastfeeding actually doesn’t apply to the story I told you, about a woman who thought that breastfeeding alone, without all your conditionals, was birth control. Under some very specific circumstances, it reduces the chance of conception, but certainly not for most working women who can’t stay home with their infant full-time. So you could maybe dial back the attitude a little. I really don’t get where it’s coming from, actually.
This thread transports me back to Jr. HS Sex Education.
You can get preggers from having sex while menstruating? Really?
Somebody needs to tell that to all the couples who are trying to conceive - by having sex during the fertile part of the woman’s cycle. Apparently they’re doing it all wrong.
Maybe you could do it if you were on the rag, and doing it in a Jr HS Sex Education classroom. And you got your period once every five days.
Of course. In our textbook, chapter one was titled Abstinence. We spent all semester in chapter one. Never really talked about anything else. The basic message of the class was that Abstinence is the solution for all our sexual problems. Kind of strange, now that I think about it; I sort of expected to talk about some other stuff. Oh well, whatever.
Anyway, I’m off to have some butt sex with a crack whore. I can’t get pregnant from that, and if I drink some Robitussin beforehand and wash off my dick with Mountain Dew afterwards, I won’t get the AIDS. Ciao!
I would wonder about that too! I have never heard of anybody trying to perform vaginal intercourse with a tampon already inserted, and would think it would be (a) damned uncomfortable and (b) potentially dangerous, if you ram the tampon up against or even into the cervix.
I think it’s probably coming from reaction to your own attitude that women who spread misinformation about sex and reproduction are likely to be liars rather than simply ignorant:
I think we’ve seen enough anecdotal evidence in this thread to make it at least very plausible that yes, many women are indeed quite misinformed about how their own reproductive systems work. Even when their family lifestyle, career plans, and/or financial solvency depend on controlling their fertility and avoiding unwanted pregnancies, many women simply don’t know a lot of the tricky details on fertility and simply don’t bother to find out.
Men, as you note, tend to suffer from even worse cluelessness on this subject, even though men too should understand the importance of controlling their own fertility and the impact that unwanted conception can have on their lives.
I’m kind of surprised that you “have a hard time believing” that ignorance on these subjects is so widespread. If there’s one thing that hanging around these boards should teach us, it’s that ignorance is Everywhere!!
Dial back the attitude? In a pit thread? Where you’re calling ignorant women stupid and liars?
I don’t know these women. It’s very possible, perhaps even likely, that they and their mates *are *stupid and *are *liars. But I really don’t think that every woman who doesn’t know how her cycle works is a stupid liar, as your title and your sweeping generalizations in the OP indicate. I’m just furious that women are expected to know what they’re not taught and the men somehow aren’t. I’m fucking pissed off that girls aren’t taught how to recognize their fertility signs, and that the overwhelming majority of people in this fucked up nation would prefer we not teach them how to take control over their own fertility. I’m rather irked that high school health classes don’t include adequate basic anatomy lessons on the female urino-genital tract. And yet, somehow, even though we refuse to teach them, they’re the stupid liars when they don’t magically know. This attitude isn’t exclusive to you, I see it all the time. But I mostly see it tied in with the idea that women are responsible for reproduction and men just happen to be innocent dupes, and that pisses me off.
I’m not sure why this is pushing my buttons so badly today. Perhaps because yesterday I had yet another conversation with a scared young woman who honestly thought she couldn’t get pregnant on her period, and is now facing an abortion. Maybe because last weekend I had to explain to my goddaughter that the white stuff on her panties wasn’t a recurrent yeast infection, but her normal cervical fluid. Maybe because I know these won’t be the last times I have these conversations with frightened women who honestly don’t know their urine doesn’t come out their vagina.
LinusK, a true period is when, 12-16 days after ovulation, the corpus luteum (the “scar” from which the egg popped out of the ovary) dissolves, taking its progesterone with it. The sudden drop in progesterone signals the uterine lining to slough off. We call that “a menstrual period”.
However, if a woman does not ovulate, the estrogen in her system builds and builds to the point at which the lining sloughs off in response to an elevated estrogen level. There is no egg here, it didn’t follow ovulation, so it’s not really and technically “a menstrual period”, but it looks exactly like it. Red stuff comes out, you get cramps, etc. This is called an anovulatory period (“an” meaning “no”, so “no-ovulation” period, if you will.) But since no ovulation took place, the body is free to ovulate any time, “period” or no. Sometimes the egg is released during the anovulatory period, and can still be fertilized during this period and implant in the uterus two weeks later, resulting in a pregnancy.
So while it doesn’t happen very often, it does happen. Women can and do get pregnant while Aunt Flo is visiting.
Done it. Once. Remembered it after a bit, stopped, removed it and carried on. It wasn’t particularly uncomfortable and I didn’t hurt myself, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it on a regular basis.
Oh…you’ve fought some of my ignorance. I was arguing with someone about whether a woman could conceive during her period. He said no, I said yes, but my argument was hampered by the fact that I didn’t quite know how such a pregnancy would then occur. Thanks!
Less likely is not the same as impossible. Sperm can live inside a woman for as long as 7 days. If you have sex near the end of your period, and then ovulate a little early, it can happen. True, it is not very likely. Obviously, if you are trying to conceive this is not a very effective manner so no one who is trying to get pregnant is going to be advised that this is the best way of going about it, but it is all about odds. It can and does happen, so if anyone is under the impression that having sex during menstruation makes pregnancy impossible, they are just wrong. http://parenting.ivillage.com/ttc/ttcsigns/0,,midwife_3pf6,00.html
Ellen Cherry, I have been unable to get the same answer from 2 different doctors about the pill while breastfeeding thing. I know I read that the mini pill is not as effective as the regular pill when used alone, but I don’t know what the stats are. Is it 50% as effective or 99%? I don’t know, and I would guess that the amount you breastfeed and whether you are exclusive or not matters here too.
I also had a Dr. tell me that I could be on the regular pill while breastfeeding and it doesn’t affect milk supply, so there is a lot of differing opinions out there on this combo. I think a lot of the problem is that not all breastfeeding is the same and hormone levels vary in different women.
Let’s be completely clear: if the woman truly is menstruating, there is no possible way to conceive. However, there is no predictable time during the month when it can be definitively known menses are occurring. Menstrual bleeding is not a completely reliable indicator, and ovulation can occur before bleedfing has stopped.
It’s a nit-picky point, perhaps, but a valid one. There’s no safe time to engage in intercourse. But there are times when pregnancy is not possible. You just don’t know when they are.
On edit after posting: this was explained much better by others above.
Just for the record… you do realize that you’re probably not going to see much even with the lights on and eyes wide open, right? The average woman doesn’t really loose that much blood even over the entire course of her period, so an hour’s worth will stain the towel some but isn’t going to result in you ducking for cover. You probably won’t even see it coming out unless it’s her heaviest time and you’re looking for it.
Well, OK, I sometimes bleed a little more when I, um, finish, but it’s still not a LOT.
I did a class a few quarters ago on Ancient Women. I did my final project on ancient gynecological texts and focused on Aristotle’s “temperature” theory. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was, and how no one would believe it now.
While I was writing up drafts, I read an article in the school newspaper about a prevailing belief among some poor women that sitting on a cold sidewalk after sex would prevent pregnancy. I shared the article with my class which included another non-trad - a former RN from PP - and she not only confirmed this belief but also said that douching with 7up (yes, the soda) was thought to be a contraceptive as well. Then they come into PP 3-4 months along wondering why they aren’t getting their damn period.
Ignorance about female sexuality - it’s not just for men. If you want to Pit anything, Pit the Administration for pushing abstinence-only education and Pit schools for sidestepping the issue and Pit parents for being irresponsible and willfully ignorant and too “embarrassed” to talk to their kids about this shit. I thank my lucky stars that I have a loving, supportive, and extremely straight-forward network of women in my family that educated me about these things as well as being in an awesome school system that didn’t try to conceal the facts of life. Many women are not so lucky.
