Since birth control totally messes up the signs of fertility, you won't be able to reliably test until the week after your period ought to have arrived.

Have you considered one of the natural family planning methods? No pills to remember, no guessing games, no surprises. You know every day if you are fertile and if you are likely to get pregnant that day. When you appropriately use jt, hormonal birth control has an effective rate pretty low while the Creighton and Billings methods have over a 99% effectiveness rating.

Look up the Couple to Couple League in your area and they'll be able to tell you the signs of fertility and pregnancy and help you to not have this feeling of wonder or doubt in the future.

are you telling her to use the calendar method ? since you "know everyday that you're fertile" bc if thats the case I think birth control is MOST DEFINITELY more effective than this "method" unlike this method birth control allows you to spontaneously have sex whenever you want and not keep track of what days you're fertile and not fertile...if the pill is hard to remember I would suggest using the ring or getting the shots or an IUD put in but I wouldn't rely on the calendar method ESPECIALLY since she mentioned pre birth control she was very irregular...bc if shes anything like me before I went on birth control I NEVER knew when I was going to get my next period, it was horrible...i remember one month I went 38 days before I got my next period...I had counted the 28 bc thats "normal" for most people and I waited and waited and waited...ten days later finally got it...so for women with irregular cycles..this method is not good

also I believe I've been told that you can test as soon as 2 weeks after you had sex(someone correct me if i'm wrong) but you can definitely test 5 days before you supposedly "miss" your period..you dont have to wait until a week after for it to be accurate...even with the birth control in your system your body will be able to detect pregnancy horomones...

You can test earlier, but the home kits aren't consistently reliable until after. Since she's already got one negative from a home test, another immediately after isn't likely to be better. If you want to go to the doc for a blood test, they can do it the earliest.

No, I would not recommend the calendar method. It is atrociously inaccurate! The body doesn't follow a strict 28 day cycle and following that, especially when irregular in the first place, she'd end up pregnant in a month. Instead, I recommend the Billings, Creighton, Marquette, or Sympto-Thermal methods. They are particularly good for women with irregular cycles because it tracks HER fertility with whatever its little quirks are with over 99% accuracy.

Here's one link: http://www.fertaware.com/

To the OP, did you continue to have sex even after you lost your birth control? Did you use back up or was it unprotected? If you didn't use any kind of back up method of birth control then there is a good chance for pregnancy, but you would not be experiencing symptoms within a week and a half of sex.

SwizelStick, I understand that what you are saying may be very accurate, but most teens have a hard time even remembering to take a pill (takes about 1 minute) or put on a condom (less than a minute). I just can't see your average teen logging their cervical mucus and temping every morning. You'd have just as much luck getting teens to practice abstinence.

A mucus only model would be the best for young people. Billings or Creighton would be ideal as they don't rely on steady sleep patterns, temperature taking, or other complicated tracking like sympto-thermal models.

It allows teens to predict their periods with accuracy, to know their times of fertility on a day-by-day basis, and doesn't require any fancy equipment or time investments.

eh..i'm still a big supporter of the condom or pill...just seems like less to remember to me...plus a young person being able to sustain from sex during that time anyway would be...hard...they're more likely to take that chance and wind up pregnant..at that age you hardly think of the consequences until after youve acted...thats why i'm a huge supporter of birth control..and if horomones dont work..then get him to wrap it up..easy enough

Considering how frequently birth control and condoms don't work and the large number of young women who used one or both and thought they were unable to become pregnant who later look to abortions as back-up birth control, I'd much rather equip a young woman with knowledge of when she is fertile and when she will become pregnant.

The broken safety net that pills provide, especially considering the adverse health risks sustained usage puts young women at the risk of contracting on top of its high failure rate, is not helping them.

Instead, a mucus-only model of NFP allows a woman to know minute-by-minute what her fertility is and to know for a fact that if she has sex today she is likely to become pregnant. I believe they are less likely to take that chance than they are when they think taking a pill will keep them from getting pregnant so they never learn about their fertility and instead rely on chemicals which all too often fail. Condoms have a higher rate of failure and of user error still. Knowledge is power. A woman who knows her body will respect it and will expect others to respect it, too.

According to Simeon Margolis, M.D., Ph.D. of Johns Hopkins, medicating a woman's fertility with estrogen "increases the danger of uterine cancer" and its "long-term use, for example, increases the risk of stroke. Estrogens also increase the risk of breast cancer..."

So you'd rather a young woman risk pregnancy, uterine cancer, breast cancer, and stroke by taking a pill every day to suppress her fertility because you think it is easier than learning how her body works and doing a two-minute check when she's already in the bathroom, which poses no adverse health risks but provides the benefits of awareness and prevention making her more likely to be healthy and in control of her body and her fertility?

This young woman already said she's not keeping up with her birth control, she had unprotected sex anyway, and she has no idea if she was or was not fertile at the time. Statistics show she isn't likely to become better about taking the pill, and even if she did it perfectly, it would just get her in the same range of effectiveness as a fertility awareness model. They also show if she's taught how her body works, she'll be in control of it and her fertility and be able to make informed decisions. Over 99% of people who become pregnant while practicing a fertility awareness model do so because they knowingly choose to get pregnant, and less than 1% who use the methods to avoid pregnancy and become pregnant did not intend to. The condom and the pill don't come close to that.

Anyway, remembering to take a pill at the same time every day, to avoid medical interactions which could reduce or eliminate its effectiveness, to abstain during times of illness which can reduce or eliminate its effectiveness, and to take on the physical risk of pregnancy, stroke, or cancer as well as possible infertility when she wants to have children seems like a lot to remember and put on a young women when she could just learn how her body works once and use nothing more than her fingers (or a thermometer and piece of paper for the very strict methods) instead. Seems like the much easier and friendlier way to me.

I do understand we disagree, so if you'd like to end the discussion, I'll be happy to let you have the last word. I don't want to use this young woman as an excuse to argue theoretics while she's sitting here living the actuality. We both want the best for her and are saying what we are out of care and concern for her health and future. Hopefully between us she was able to find some of the support she needed.

Could you link a website with more info on the mucus only model...or provide info on exactly what that is?

i guess the only issue i have with this is that i just cant see a teen being responsible to monitor this as responsibly as they should..i dont know much about this method so i cant argue how effective it is i'm just trying to understand how this would work for a teenager(though I'm not supportive of younger teenagers having sex period...)

Here is one example method. A woman with a consistent cycle would not need to regularly chart, but a woman with a highly irregular cycle would benefit more from it.

http://www.creightonmodel.com/background.h tm

The website has a lot more of the details. The "nutshell" version is that a woman's cervical position and cervical mucus consistently changes immediately before and during ovulation. If she has clear, stretchy mucous then she is fertile. That's the nutshell, but it doesn't get much more complicated than that.

Okay, that seems to be a good method, for more mature people, not teens. And I personally would not rely on that method at all, as yeast infections as well as pH changes in the vagina can alter the discharge. And not every woman has the telltale ovulation discharge, me being one of them. I had mizzlesmerch (sp?) which is the pain that some women feel in one ovary or the other (or sometimes both) when an egg is released from the follicle. I, however, never really had any kind of thicker discharge or changes in discharge. And I definitly would not condone any kind of "checking of cervical changes" unless done so by a licensed medical professional. The cervix is a very delicate part of a woman's body and is easily injured. And to stick a finger up there, clean as it can be or not, you run a risk (slight or not) of cervical, vaginal, and even uterine infections.