How to Prevent Pregnancy

Dr. Jyoti Bhaskar, Sr. Consultant obstetrics and gynaecology and an infertility specialist.
Recently I have seen very special and different trend of young girls asking about contraception and how to prevent pregnancy, so i would like to address this issue today.
It’s extremely important for all young girls to be aware that they need to protect themselves whether married or unmarried. It’s extremely important for them to know about contraception.

The contraception that is available for them is the use of condoms for which they need to depend upon the male partner and of which the success rate is very low. If 100 people are using condoms, the failure rate is as high as 25%. If they need to protect themselves full proof, they need to take oral contraceptive pills. There are lots of myth associated with these pills but I would say that it has more than 99% protection rate and if you need to protect your health, you need to take these pills, they are safe. Go to a gynaecologist, get yourself fully examined and then take these pills.

Another thing I would like to tell you that in case you do have an un-protective intercourse, please take emergency contraceptive pills. It’s better to take this pill than to come for a medical abortion once you are pregnant. These pills are freely available at a pharmacist. You need to take them within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse and if taken well and properly, the success rate is as high as 95%.

We also need to know that what is the fertile period i.e. when you need to really protect. The ovulation takes place about 14 days after your period starts i.e. to say from the 10th to the 20th day of your period, you are very likely to get pregnant if you do not use any protection. Many young girls do ask me that when can they know that they are pregnant. We have these urinary kits, which are available at the pharmacies, they are very sensitive and they can detect pregnancies as early as the day you have missed the periods and sometimes even 2 or 3 days earlier. If you are in doubt, do the urine pregnancy test and then go to your gynaecologist if your pregnancy test is positive in case you do not want to keep this pregnancy. Please do not go directly to the pharmacist to get the medications to go in for the abortion, you need to go to a gynaecologist, get an ultrasound done, confirm where the pregnancy is, how big your pregnancy is and only on the advice of the gynaecologist, take medications. Self-medication lead to lot of problems, you can land up in emergencies and in hospitals.

If you have any queries, if you need any information, you can please consult me online on Lybrate.