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The pill is most effective at preventing pregnancy when you take it at the same time every day. Check out our top tips for remembering to take the pill.
Forgetting to take your pill is a common reason for the pill failing. For the pill to work effectively at preventing unwanted pregnancy, you need to remember to take it as directed.
When experts talk about the effectiveness of contraception, they talk about perfect use and typical use.
This is when someone follows the instructions that come with a contraceptive method perfectly. By doing this, their chances of getting pregnant are much lower.
This is a more realistic view of how people use contraception, and reflects the fact that people will make mistakes. With typical use, people are more likely to get pregnant.
With perfect use, the contraceptive pills are 99% effective at preventing pregnancy, however with typical use this is more like 91%.
A great way to help you achieve perfect use is to form a habit to help you remember to take your pill.
The simplest thing that you can do to help you remember to take your pill is to set a daily reminder on your phone. This could just be an alarm but you there are also apps that are designed to give you pill reminders.
Set it for a time that you know your phone will be near you and you’ll have your pills with you – for example, half an hour after your morning wake-up alarm.
To get into the habit of taking your pill every day:
You might still forget to take your pill if your routine changes, for example if you’re away from home, staying with a friend or a partner or on holiday.
Here are some tips to help you remember in these cases:
Even when you’re in a different time zone, it’s important to take your pill at the same time of day as you normally would at home.
This means that if you take it in the morning when you’re at home, you might have to take it in the evening when you’re away (when it’s morning in the UK). If your holiday destination is only one or two hour’s difference from the UK, you shouldn’t need to worry. However, if you’re travelling long haul, you need to consider when to take your pill.
Before you go, work out what time it will be when you’re on holiday, when you usually take your pill at home. For example, if you normally take your pill at about 8am in the UK, and you’re going to be in California, you should take your pill at midnight. This might be quite difficult, but you might want to consider taking your pill just before you go to bed at night.
And remember, if you’re worried, you can always use another method (such as condoms) to make sure that you are protected.
LARC methods
If remembering to take your pill is too much hassle, there are a number of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) that you don’t have to think about again for weeks, months or even years e.g. the injection, the implant, the copper coil and the hormonal coil.
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