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To get pregnant, vaginal intercourse is necessary. But on very rare occasions, oral or anal intercourse has been able to initiate a pregnancy. How can this be explained? Let’s take a closer look at these exceptional cases.
The vast majority of pregnancies begin with vaginal intercourse. But the human body is extraordinary, Professor Adam Taylor of Lancaster University explains in The Conversation how some women were able to get pregnant in four extremely rare circumstances. These pregnancies began following anal intercourse, oral intercourse, due to a splash of semen, or while the woman was already pregnant.
Pregnancy after anal intercourse
The first case cited is becoming pregnant following anal intercourse. This can occur when the woman is a carrier of a rare anomaly – affecting approximately one in 50,000 women – called cloacal malformation. This is an opening between the rectal and vaginal cavities, which allows sperm to escape into the vagina and fertilize the egg. Pregnancy then occurs normally, in the uterus.
Pregnancy following oral sex
A article published in the journal British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology reports the case of a 15-year-old girl living in Lesotho, a country in southern Africa. She went to her doctor with abdominal pain and doctors discovered that she was pregnant. However, the girl was born without a vagina, affected by Mullerian agenesis.
How did she get pregnant? Nine months earlier, she had performed oral sex on her lover and was caught red-handed by her jealous ex-boyfriend, who stabbed her in the stomach. She went to hospital for treatment, but the sperm was able to reach her egg and fertilize it. The girl gave birth to a healthy baby boy by caesarean section.
Pregnancy by sperm splash
Splash pregnancy begins when there has been no vaginal intercourse but simply a splash of sperm from the woman’s external genitalia. This can be enough for sperm to end up in the vagina and reach the ovaries. But these pregnancies are rare due to the short lifespan of sperm outside the human body: no more than half an hour and with an optimal speed of 5 mm per minute… In other words, you have had to deal with “Super Sperm”!
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Finally, double pregnancies
Normally, the human body in women sets up a mechanism that prevents them from becoming pregnant a second time, after the beginning of a pregnancy. But this mechanism may not work. This is called double pregnancy or superfetation. Often, cases involve women who resort to in vitro fertilization. The two pregnancies are very close to each other (usually between two and four weeks apart) and the babies can be born at the same time, like twins.
Professor Taylor finally recalls that “these examples are of course extremely rare” and “so you don’t need to worry”. Before concluding : “However, if you are not looking to get pregnant anytime soon, be sure to use contraception.“.