When Alison Smerek found out she was pregnant with her first child 14 years ago, she?d been on the combined birth control pill (which contains both estrogen and progestin) for close to a decade, and had always been very careful about taking it consistently. When Smerek, then 28, peed on a stick and got a positive result, she thought, I don’t know what I’m going to do. To say it was unplanned is to put it mildly. She and her then-boyfriend, Dean, weren?t even living together in their new home yet, and she was just days into a new job when she got confirmation from her doctor that she was expecting. But after that initial shock, she was overjoyed that they were having a baby. Today, Dean, who is now her husband, says that it was fate, and jokes they wouldn’t have gotten off their butts to get life in gear if it hadn?t been for the surprise baby. Smerek?s story is not unusual. According to a survey of 3,200 women conducted in 2016 by the Society of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians of Canada (SOGC), one in five of them had an unplanned pregnancy. Though many birth control methods are highly effective, it?s not rare for people to get pregnant while using contraception. 
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