Finding birth control that doesn’t make you miserable is a chore — a chore, I tell you! But if there’s one thing I hope we can all agree on is that you always want your birth control to work. Unfortunately that doesn’t always happen, as evidenced by one ultrasound tech on TikTok who got a lot of attention online when she shared that she got pregnant while using an IUD.
If you’re really not trying to get pregnant, what @itsscharonnotsharon described is pretty much a nightmare scenario.
That is, you’re out there living your best life, completely oblivious to the fact that your birth control has done you dirty. The video from April 5 shows Scharon at work, trying to make sure that everything’s OK down there.
“When I’m doing my monthly IUD location check up at work because I’ve been pregnant with one before,” she wrote video’s text overlay. “And I see a pregnancy sac next to my IUD.”
And we all know what that means. Yep, preggers.
“Not again … .” she added in the video’s caption.
Yeah, the over 8 million people who watched Scharon's video did NOT take the news well.
"Please don’t give my IUD any ideas," one person joked.
"What works!?" someone else exclaimed. "I'm s—ing and crying, at this point I'm thinking radical hysterectomy."
"I do not claim this," another commenter wrote.
Unfortunately, many people commented that they also got pregnant while using birth control — eek!
"I've always gotten pregnant on birth control and no one really believes it," someone commented.
"Currently 26 weeks with my Copper IUD fail," another person chimed in.
"Had a boy and twin girls while on birth control," another commenter added.
The comments section might have raised alarm bells, but according to Planned Parenthood, IUDs are actually pretty effective ways to prevent pregnancy.
According to the Planned Parenthood website, “IUDs are one of the best birth control methods out there” and are 99% effective.
“That means fewer than 1 out of 100 people who use an IUD will get pregnant each year,” the website states.
A big contributing factor here is that you can’t forget to use IUDs in the same way you might sometimes forget to take your birth control pill or use barrier methods incorrectly. IUDs don’t prevent against sexually transmitted infections, but they do protect you from pregnancy 24/7 “for 3 to 12 years, depending on which kind you get.”
But of course, if you are one of the 1 in 100 people who does get pregnant while using IUD (as is Scharon's case, not once but twice!) it’s understandable that this could be a little frustrating.
Or as one commenter warned: "Stay safe ladies."
