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Um, I was kidding. However, while condoms and pills alone are not 100% effective - condoms and pills together or tubal ligation and vasectomies together are really close. As a married couple, if you're REALLY that dead set against having more kids - do something about it. Either castrate your husband or don't have sex.

Back in the old days, my mother's days, no babies were "surprise babies" --- the concept would have been considered nonsensical. If you were sharing a bed with your husband, you expected to be having babies....

And yet my mother, never having used a contraceptive, only had two kids. She went 17 years without conceiving, and then had two between age 37 amd 40.

I'm not making a general pint here. If anything, I'm refuting the notion you sometimes hear, that if you don't use contraceptives you'll end up with 16 kids. The truth is, you don't know.

The one thing you do know, is that intercourse is a probable cause of pregnancy. On bad effect of contraception is that it makes pregnancy seem like a violation of the rules, an anomaly, an imposition, or an outrage: when --- as anybody over the age of 9 ought to know --- that's what happens. That's where babies come from.