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Is my choice of Birth Control Effective?

Take note that there is still an option to prevent pregnancy, an emergency birth control pill even if you have sex without birth control or find out that a birth control device has failed within 5 days after intercourse.

The Function of the Reproductive System of a Woman
If five days has passed since you find out that your choice of birth control has failed you, then it is probably to your benefit to learn about how the reproductive system of the woman functions and how pregnancy occurs. Most females have several egg cells in the ovary that mature and yet it is only one egg cell that gets released every month. This process is called ovulation which is what is prevented from happening by birth control devices that contain hormones. Since the uterus is the place where a baby stays for nine months, until ovulation occurs, its lining prepares for an impending fertilized egg, becoming thick with nourishment. When the egg cell released is not fertilized by a sperm cell in 12 - 48 hours, usually due to an effective birth control device, then it will disintegrate. After two weeks, the uterine lining is shed as menstruation. And then, another cycle begins.

A couple of weeks or approximately 15 days after the first day a female has her menstruation, ovulation occurs. It is vital to note that the ovulation times constantly changes and is easily affected by a lot of factors, including stressful situations and diet issues. Birth control devices are aimed at stopping ovulation from occurring. It is somewhat tricky to detect the exact time a woman ovulates because it has no definite day every month. According to studies on the menstrual cycle, a woman menstruates every 26 - 32 days. A high incidence of conception occurs on the 8th day to the 19th day. The start of a cycle is counted on the first day of menstruation. When an egg cell is released by the ovary, it travels down to the one of the pair of fallopian tubes, either the right or the left, and awaits for a sperm cell to initiate fertilization, unless blocked by an effective birth control device. Irregularities in the cycle are usually given birth control pills to regulate it.

A woman is most fertile when she is ovulating, which is the best time to conceive a child. Thus, sexual intercourse during these times of ovulation increases the incidence of pregnancy. Birth control is best used during the 5 days to a week before ovulation takes place and a day after this in order to prevent pregnancy to occur. This is based on the fact that the life span of a sperm cell reaches up to 5 days. So, if sexual intercourse occurs without any birth control device, there is still the possibility for a sperm cell to fertilize an egg cell since it is still present in the reproductive tract on the fifth day.

If you have a feeling that your birth control device failed to do its job properly during a woman's fertile period, then the risk of pregnancy exists.

According to medical experts, the start of pregnancy is when a fertilized egg is implanted on the lining of the uterus. This occurs a few days after the egg gets fertilized by the sperm due to lack of birth control used. When implantation happens, the hormone hCG or human Chorionic Gonadotropin is seen to hit high levels, since it is needed to sustain the pregnancy. It is the presence of hCG in the urine or blood that is measured when taking a pregnancy test. The best time to take a pregnancy test is at least a week after your supposed period so as to rule out any false negative test result which may lead you to believe that you are not pregnant and that your birth control device is effective and yet to find out you are but that the levels of hCG were not high enough to be detected that time by the pregnancy test.

Am I pregnant?

The thought of being pregnant when all means of birth control were done to prevent it from happening may lead to much stress especially if you are not positively sure that you really are. You have missed your monthly period and you are experiencing signs of being pregnant. You are extremely stressed because you cannot figure out what went wrong with your birth control device. But are you really pregnant or just experiencing a delay in your menses because of this stress and other logical reasons. For the record, the usual cause of missing a menstrual period is pregnancy, and women who truly are pregnant usually have staining or spotting at the time of their period. But with the proper birth control device, fertilization should not have happened.

A woman's hormones can also affect the time of menstruation especially when PMS symptoms affect a woman greatly. Stress is definitely a great delayer of menstruation which may mean that the birth control device used was not a failure. But hormones created because of pregnancy can also affect the body the same way, creating anxiety and stress.

According to Dr. Kathleen Mammel, the Adolescent Pediatrics director at the William Beaumont Hospital at Royal Oak, Michigan, to be able to understand and know if your menstruation is just delayed, a woman has to know that the a menstrual cycle starts on the first day of your menstruation and ends on the first day of the next menstruation. This cycle is unique for every woman. Even so, the cycle itself follows a unique schedule, wherein sometimes you can predict it to fall on the same day every month, and sometimes you can't. A typical and normal cycle averages 28 days with cycles from 21 days to 35 days. Menstruation has a duration of 3 - 7 days. Women with irregular periods are given birth control pills to help regulate it. The menstruation is considered to be delayed if it does not occur at a minimum of 5 days after your usual menstrual date. The menstrual period is definitely considered a missed period if it reaches up to 6 weeks or more.

Before going into what has gone wrong with your choice of birth control, the first step to do is to determine and be positively sure that you are pregnant or not. And this is done using a pregnancy test.