I am on the pill, and we don't use condoms anymore :) I have been on them for over a year now, and have been having condom-less sex, and not gotten pregnant.

You better be careful eiri..... You at a possible high risk of getting pregnant or getting an sti/std....

Yep... Birth control may help prevent pregnancy, but it has zero protection against stds

I only have sex with my boyfriend, we're monagamus; and he tested about a year after he'd had sex with his last girlfriend... And that was a year before we started dating... And I was a virgin. Thus, no std's! Trust me, i'm far too paranoid to just run around having unprotected sex with random dirty people.

Sorry eiri that you took that as being toward you. It wasn't. I was merely stating that birth control is effective against pregancy and not against stds. The original poster did not state whether anyone had been tested for anything or if they had any sexual past. Always better to inform people of the whole truth.

If unplanned/unwanted pregnancy is your biggest concern, I suggest using at least two kinds of protection. Birth control, spermicide - maybe you could even use two kinds of hormonal birth control at once (pill and patch, for example). What about an iud? They can be more painful to have inserted if you have not had children, but it's still temporary and almost as effective as sterilization. It's pricey ($500 at least, last I checked), but you would need to decide if the price would be worth 2-10 years of nearly-perfect protection.

Do keep in mind that you can still get pregnant whenever you have sex, protected or not. Many women have gotten pregnant while on the pill and while using condoms at the same time, so take all the precautions you possibly can.

Sorry that I didn't mention in my first post, that my boyf and I are monogomus and have been for the past year. We both got tested prior to having unprotected sex (for everything) and I have been tested since then, and am still negitive. :)

also, I tried the meraina (sp?) iud for 4 months... Yep, I shelled out $600 for 4 months of birth controll only to realize that I wasnt for me. I had lots of problems with it. It caused me to have very painfull intercourse (even after applying lube) it turned me into a grumpy problem and lotsss of other hideous problems. I am only going to be on the pill for 4 months (again) untill I return to my home country for a vacation, where medical procedures (such as buying birth controll and having it inserted) are paid for mostly by the govornment and have the copper iud put in.

I was just wondering if I was going to need to wear condoms whilst on the pill, if this was the case I would just not bother with it, as it was not so much the iud that gave me problems, but the extra hormones.