Your purchase plans for the next nine months hardly include a little pink stroller and diaper bag, and you don’t even want to think about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). You were just getting it on for the night when, oops, the condom broke (or you were so caught up in the moment you let him skip the rubber, just this once). Now what's a girl to do? 1. Chat with your partner.Jasmine, 23, of Fort Hood, TX, says after the condom broke during a one night stand, she went numb. “I was so out of it, I didn’t ask him anything. I just wanted him to go,” she says. “But then when I went to get tested for STDs, my gyno asked questions about his sexual past and I couldn’t tell her a thing.”
To avoid Jasmine’s situation, after you stop freaking out and cursing yourself, have a sit-down with the guy. “You have to discuss sexual history and whether both of you have been tested for STDs,” says Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale School of Medicine and author of
A Woman's Guide to Sexual Health.
2. Prevent an unwanted pregnancy.Unless you’re ready for children, get emergency contraception. The most common are found in pill form.
The pills are about 75-89% effective in helping to prevent pregnancy and they’re not just effective the day after unprotected sex. “You can take it up to five days after this kind of an accident, but the earlier you get it the better,” says Dr. Hilda Hutcherson, an AOL Love & Sex Coach and author of
Pleasure: A Woman's Guide to Getting the Sex You Want, Need, and Deserve.