Around 50 percent of teenagers and young women who got pregnant and gave birth conceive again within a year! A lot of those women faced an unplanned pregnancy the first time round, and are obviously at a very high risk of this happening again. According to new research, giving these girls and women birth control implants (Implanon) while they are still in hospital prevents repeat unplanned pregnancies.
Does the suggestion that birth control prevents pregnancy fall into the Captain Obvious AKA Needs No Further Study category? It's actually a little more complicated than that. Dr Kristina M Tocce the lead researcher on this study, from the University of Colorado, Denver School of Medicine in Aurora, wanted to find out how the theory that putting new moms on birth control right after giving birth worked out in practice. Weirdly enough, there was little prior research on this.
Amazingly, the found that a shocking number of adolescents who got pregnant conceived again within 12 months of giving birth to their first baby between 12 and 49 out of every 100! The risks are not just social and economical, either apparently the group that gets pregnant again triples the risk they will have go into labor prematurely, or suffer a stillbirth.
The makers of Implanon advises new moms to wait for four weeks until they get the implant after giving birth, and they also say that some of the hormones contained in the implant pass into breast milk. The study looked into inserting Implanon immediately, probably because they assumed new moms may not have the time or will to go to get it later on. Indeed, most of those who got Implanon right after delivering still had it a year later. The small amount of women who had it taken out had irregular or otherwise disturbing periods, and had Implanon removed because of this.
Is Implanon the right birth control method for you? Read to find out.
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