Jenna asked
The question I have is about birth control. I take my pill everyday at 10pm. However. lately I have been so stressed. The following scenario happened three times in 5 weeks. Sat 10pm I took it @ Sun 10pm, Missed Mon 10pm and took Sun pill and Mon pill. Should I go get emergency contraceptive? Does the pill weaken missing it so many times? I technically did not go more than 48 hours without taking the pills. But the 48 hours window happened three times. Is that going to be an issue?
At a glance
- If you miss a dose of your birth control pills, reference the patient information pamphlet that came with your prescription for specific directions for your particular birth control pill product. Additionally, you should reach out to your doctor or pharmacist.
Answer
Missed doses of birth control can certainly increase the risk of unintended pregnancy. It's difficult to say how much your risk has increased as there are many factors that need to be taken into account.
Missed Birth Control Doses - Factors For Risk Of Unintended Pregnancy
- Time since your last missed dose
- How many and how often you miss doses
- The date of your last menstrual cycle and when during the cycle your dose was missed
- The last time you had sex
- The type of birth control that you take (different products have different amounts of hormones)
While all the situations above influence what can happen if you miss a pill, the type of birth control is also the major factor.
For some birth control pills (e.g. progestin-only 'mini-pills'), missing one dose can be a problem... being off by a few hours can induce spotting/bleeding and increase the chance of becoming pregnant.[1]
Products that utilize a combination of hormones (i.e. both an estrogen and a progestin) typically do not affect your cycle as much if you miss a single dose.[2]
What To Do
For your specific situation, I absolutely recommend you speak to your pharmacist or doctor. You can also reference the package insert that was included along with your prescription. That will give you specific instructions on how to "catch-up" on your birth control as well as if you need to use backup contraception or even emergency contraception.
If you would like, you can respond to us and let us know the name of your birth control product and we can look up instructions for you. Since we don't know your specific product at this time, we have given an example below of a popular combined oral contraceptive pill and what to do if you have missed a pill:[3]
So again, what you need to do depends on the specific product you have. In general terms, however, missing doses and not taking the product consistently does increase your chance of becoming pregnant.
As a general rule of thumb, if you miss 2 or more doses (as per your situation) and you had intercourse anytime during that month, emergency contraceptive may be an option. As we can't give specific advice, I would advise you to reach out to your pharmacist or doctor.[4]
If you do decide to use emergency contraception, you typically would resume your current pack of birth control or start a new one and use backup birth control for 7 days.
References
- ^ Progestin-only contraceptive pill use among women in the United States. PubMed
- ^ Choosing a combined oral contraceptive pill PubMed
- ^ Yasmin Prescribing Information
- ^ Late or Missed Doses and Side Effects from Combined Hormonal Contraceptive. Centers for Disease Control
