Richard Bradford IV. Essays - Hormonal Contraception, Midwifery

Richard Bradford IV. Mr. Jonathan Bishop Birth Control Report Tuesday March 28, 2000 The Effectiveness of Birth Control Today's woman has many birth control options that allow her to plan whether or not she has children, when she has children, and the age difference between her children. This paper is designed as an overview of available options about choosing a birth control method that matches the physical, emotional and lifestyle needs. I personally feel that the pill is a excellent, affordable, 99.5% effective method of birth control. According to Contraceptive Technology, combination pills are approximately 99.9 percent effective if used perfectly. What that means is that one in 1,000 women taking the Pill will get pregnant in the period of a year. In real-life use, about 3 percent of users get pregnant in the course of a year Statistics state that this is "usually due to missing one or more pills." However, two things that should be remembered. Statistics are not everything--the best form of birth control is the one you will use correctly and consistently. Oral contraceptives provide no protection from sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV. So if that is a concern, you should combine the Pill with condoms for an unbeatable combination! At any stage of life, a woman may find that one method of birth control suits her needs better than others. Periodic review of available birth control options will help ensure in choose a method that best meets your current lifestyle. Some factors to consider that might be important include method effectiveness, permanency, convenience and protection against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Some questions that I have are, how safe and effective is the method, will the method affect my sex drive or my partner's sex drive, is there an age at which I should stop using hormone-based contraceptives, will the birth control method affect my ability to have children in the future, what are my birth control options if I am breastfeeding, what birth control method would you recommend for me at this stage of my life, these are some common question that might and could be asked to be answered by an health care professional. It can be very confusing trying to figure out what these numbers mean. Contraceptive effectiveness is usually reported as a percentage. These different effective numbers represent success in "women years." So if a form of birth control is 98 percent effective, that means that, on average, 98 out of 100 women using it for one year will not get pregnant. Occasionally, contraceptive effectiveness is reported in terms of "failure rates." So in the above content, the same form of birth control would have a 2 percent failure rate, meaning that 2 out of 100 women using this form of birth control would get pregnant in the period of one year. You also often see two numbers reported for each form of birth control, ideal and typical. Ideal represents the level of effectiveness if used perfectly every time; typical rates take into account human failure. Here's a neat trick: you can compute the effectiveness of combining two forms of birth control by multiplying the numbers. So for example, if you combine a condom (12 percent typical failure rate) with spermicidal foam (21 percent typical failure rate), the failure rate plummets to 2.5 percent. Most people think that the timing of taking the pill is important new statistics say. The timing of when you take the pill makes little difference. The reason doctors tell women to take the pill at the same time every day is so that they want forget. There is no need to set the clock unless you think you will completely forget otherwise. Where you are taking one day's pill right before bedtime and the next day's pill when you wake up, but a few hours will not make a difference. The only exception to this rule is if you are on very lose dose pills and are having problems with spotting. In those cases, varying the time at which you take the pill can increase spotting, but it won't decrease effectiveness no matter what. What most doctor's recommend is that you try to associate taking your birth control pills with an activity you do every day. For example, brush your teeth in the morning, or with breakfast. But, if you do these activities at a different time some days, you really don't need to worry. For some users the pill can have undesirable and sometimes serious side effects such as weight gain,