I dropped my birth control pill in water but quickly got it out and took it. Will it still work?

By Attia @ Planned Parenthood | June 29, 2020, 6:08 p.m.

If I dropped my birth control pill in the bath but immediately got it out and took it, will it still be effective?

It’s hard to say for sure without knowing what your pill looked like when you fished it out of the bath water. If some of the pill dissolved or broke off before you swallowed it, it might not work as well. So it’s safest to treat it as if you missed a pill, and use our missed pill quiz to find out the best thing to do.

The pill works really well if you always take it on time, but it can be hard to take your pill every day, and sometimes things like this happen — who doesn’t love combining a relaxing bath with taking their birth control?

Luckily, there are some methods that you don’t need to remember every day or be super careful about using correctly, like IUDs and the implant. They’re the most effective methods because they’re basically mistake proof — you set it and forget it. And they last for several years if you want them to, so you can keep your bath time worry-free. If taking the pill every day is feeling like a burden, take this quiz to see if another method might work better for you and your life.

Tags: birth control, the pill