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Pill & Diarrhoea

By November 3, 2017 - 2:40pm
 
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I am on the combined birth control pills. I take my pill every day at the same time, around 11pm. Yesterday though I had diarrhoea around 5pm, around 6 hours after I took my pill - I took another pill from a spare packet when I could, 2hrs later at 7pm, and today I took my pill as regular.

Would the pill have been absorbed properly? Am I unprotected? Thank you!

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Guide

Hello. Thank you for posting.

Why did you take an additional pill? If you took your pill, as usual, (the night before you became ill) at 5 pm the next day you should be fine. Many hours had passed. Assuming you did not have diarrhea all night. Some information below for future:

If your diarrhea has come upon you suddenly due to an illness or food poisoning, it is likely that the effectiveness of your birth control pills may be affected. This is because the active ingredients in your pill formulation may not be adequately absorbed. The rule of thumb is to assume that you can no longer count on your pills to keep you from getting pregnant if you have severe diarrhea for more than 24 hours. This means that you have passed six to eight watery stools in a 24 hour period for more than one day.

How to proceed? Call your physician and tell them what is happening. Most likely they will tell you to try to continue to finish out your pack of pills but to be sure to use an alternate method of contraception for the next seven days.

Helena

November 3, 2017 - 4:59pm
(reply to Helena)

Sorry, I meant 11am rather than 11pm! I take my pill in the morning.

What I meant was I had taken my pill that day at 11AM, and then had diarrhoea around 6hrs later, at 5pm. Then, I took an additional pill at 7pm to counter this, and continued my regular 11am pill the next day.

November 5, 2017 - 3:48pm
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