Q: I am a 21 years old female. I have been on Nuva Ring for about a month and 2 weeks now, but had to remove it for 2 weeks while I was admitted in the hospital. My partner and I had sex and the condom broke and I inserted the ring the next day. I didn't know till a week later when I developed similar symptoms like the ones I had the last time I was pregnant. I took 2 pregnancy tests at home. The results of both emerged as negative. Is this because of the ring?

A:Please keep in mind that Nuva Ring is nothing more or nothing less than a normal low-dose combined hormonal oral contraceptive (OC) pill. The active medicine is absorbed from the vagina while in OC it is absorbed from the stomach. In view of the rupture of condom, the sperms might have travelled into the uterus before the newly inserted Nuva Ring could become effective. The correct procedure was to use emergency contraception (also popularly called morning after pill) containing two tablets of levonorgestrel 750 mcg each (sold under different brand names in different countries such as Levonelle-2 or Plan B etc.). The possibility of pregnancy cannot be ruled out and you would need to do further tests to determine if conception has occurred or not.