At a glance: the combined pill You need to take the pill every day for 21 days, then stop for 7 days, and during this week you have a period-type bleed. You'll still be protected against pregnancy during these 7 days.
You are protected from pregnancy during your pill free week as long as you start taking your pill again on the 8th day. The clinic doctor or nurse may suggest that you take the pill in a different, more modern way. This has several advantages: you will have less breaks from the pill and therefore less periods.
Stop taking pills for 7 days (during these 7 days you will get a bleed). Start your next pack of pills on the 8th day, whether you are still bleeding or not. This should be the same day of the week as when you took your 1st pill.
The placebo pills themselves don't protect against pregnancy, but the regular dose of hormones provided by your active pills keeps you safe from pregnancy even during the seven days when you're not taking them.
Yes! Your Patch Free Week allows your body to have a period, but you are still protected from pregnancy during this time.
For a woman with 28 to 30 days menstrual cycle, ovulation takes place during the 10th to the 14th day. But there are still chances to of getting pregnant till the 21st day. So days 1 to 7 and 14 days before your periods are considered to be safe days.
You will still be protected from pregnancy during the 7-day pill break, as long as you have taken your Yasmin pills correctly.
You may be able to get pregnant within 1-3 months of stopping a combination pill -- meaning those that have estrogen and progestin. But most women can get pregnant within a year. One study even found that women who took the pill for more than 4 or 5 years were more fertile than those who used it for 2 years or less.
New guidance advises women to shorten their 'break' to 4 days. This means that if any pills are missed when restarting, there is less chance of the pill not working. Take one pill a day for 21 days, then no pills for the next 4 days. This means taking 3 packets of the pill, then having a 4 day break.
More than 7 pills missed
If you've missed 8 or more pills straight after each other, you will not be protected against pregnancy. If you have had unprotected sex, you may need to do a pregnancy test or take emergency contraception.
No. If you're taking birth control correctly and consistently, then you're protected against pregnancy all the time, including the days you take your placebo pills (period week). You can still have sex during this week without getting pregnant.
You're most fertile at the time of ovulation (when an egg is released from your ovaries), which usually occurs 12 to 14 days before your next period starts. This is the time of the month when you're most likely to get pregnant.
This is because the pill takes 7 days to get in control of your hormones and prevent pregnancy. If you take more than 7 days off the pill, you are at risk of pregnancy again and need 7 days of perfect pill taking before you are protected again.)
Most instructions tell you to take a seven-day pill-free break but you can choose to shorten this break, or to miss it and not have a withdrawal bleed (see Can I miss out my withdrawal bleed? on page 11).
Skipping the break would improve the cramping and also the mood swings if associated with the break. A lot of women may forget to restart the pill after the break. We also know that forgetting the pill in the first half of the cycle is more likely to lead to failure of contraception.
You can get pregnant as little as 3 weeks after the birth of a baby, even if you're breastfeeding and your periods haven't started again. Unless you want to get pregnant again, it's important to use some kind of contraception every time you have sex after giving birth, including the first time.
If you've missed three or more days or it has been longer than 48 hours since you took a pill, you are no longer protected against pregnancy. Consider emergency contraception if you've had unprotected sex in the last five days or if the pills were missed during the first week of the pack.
During these seven days you will usually have a bleed that is often shorter and lighter than your natural period. On the eighth day you should start your next strip on time even if you are still bleeding. This means you will always start your new strip of pills on the same day of the week.
Fertility increases sharply around 12–14 days before menstruation, so unprotected sex is more likely to result in pregnancy during that time. It is unlikely but possible that conception will occur in the 1 or 2 days following a period since sperm can survive for up to 7 days after sex.
Continue counting each day of your cycle until your next cycle starts. On days 1-7, you're not considered to be fertile and can have unprotected sex, though you may have menstrual bleeding on those days. On days 8-19, you're considered to be fertile. Avoid unprotected sex or abstain from sex to avoid pregnancy.
The pull-out method is about 80% effective. About one in five people who rely on the pull-out method for birth control become pregnant.
The most fertile days each cycle when you have the best chance of getting pregnant from unprotected sex, are the day of ovulation and the day before – these are the 2 days of 'peak fertility'.
If your menstrual cycle lasts 28 days and your period arrives like clockwork, it's likely that you'll ovulate on day 14. That's halfway through your cycle. Your fertile window begins on day 10. You're more likely to get pregnant if you have sex at least every other day between days 10 and 14 of a 28-day cycle.