The following questions came to us by email:
Having said that, if you have not yet started taking the pill, the best thing to do is to wait until the first day of your menstruation and starting with the first pill on that same day. If you do that, you are immediately protected, straight away, at least for 90%. After the first week after your menses, the protection should have reached a 99.5%, which doesn't get any higher.
If you're on the anti-conception pill, there's always a chance for you to get pregnant. The half percent chance will always remain. Unless you keep using a second birth control protection (i.e condom) which lowers those chances to 99.94 percent. Aside from that, getting pregnant is not the only issue to worry about. There are dozens of STD's (Sexually Transmittable Diseases) around, and the birth control pill doesn't protect you in any way against those nasty viruses! So if you're not sure if your partner is all clean, you'd better take the precaution and have sex with a condom. Even if you're already on the pill!
When you're certain that your boyfriend or one-night stand has no STD, feel free to make love without a condom, provided you've taken the birth control pill for at least 30 days prior to your intercourse (excluding the days you had your period!).
I've started taking the birth control pill for about a week now. Would you say it's now safe to have sex without condom or should I wait?Dear <...>, if you've never taken the anti-conception (birth control) pill before it's always a very smart thing to wait at least a month before having intercourse without a secondary protection such as condom. It takes some time for the hormones inside the pill to be properly absorbed by your body and for your reproductive system to get adapted to the hormones in your daily birth control pills.
Having said that, if you have not yet started taking the pill, the best thing to do is to wait until the first day of your menstruation and starting with the first pill on that same day. If you do that, you are immediately protected, straight away, at least for 90%. After the first week after your menses, the protection should have reached a 99.5%, which doesn't get any higher.
If you're on the anti-conception pill, there's always a chance for you to get pregnant. The half percent chance will always remain. Unless you keep using a second birth control protection (i.e condom) which lowers those chances to 99.94 percent. Aside from that, getting pregnant is not the only issue to worry about. There are dozens of STD's (Sexually Transmittable Diseases) around, and the birth control pill doesn't protect you in any way against those nasty viruses! So if you're not sure if your partner is all clean, you'd better take the precaution and have sex with a condom. Even if you're already on the pill!
When you're certain that your boyfriend or one-night stand has no STD, feel free to make love without a condom, provided you've taken the birth control pill for at least 30 days prior to your intercourse (excluding the days you had your period!).
