All about pregnancy tests

If you think you might be pregnant, the first and the most important thing to-do is understand if it is real or not. In many cases women think they are pregnant from the first day of their missed period. In fact that’s not always true due to many things that change women’s period, as well known many times they get it few days earlier or few days later (could be up to weeks). Anyways if in doubt, it is good to be checked and it should be done as soon as possible.
A home
pregnancy test can tell whether you are pregnant or not with almost 99%
accuracy. If a pregnancy test says you are pregnant, you should also visit your
doctor for another test to confirm the pregnancy and talk about next steps.
Please note that if a home test says you are not pregnant, but the symptoms
still persist, you could be pregnant, even though the negative result.
The
accuracy of home pregnancy (hCG) test results varies because:
- Every woman
ovulates at a different time in her menstrual cycle.
- The
fertilized egg can implant in a woman’s uterus at a different time.
- Sometimes
the negative result is because women use the test too early in their pregnancy.
- Some
pregnancy tests are more sensitive than others. To get more accurate results it
is good to use the test after the first day of your missed period.
- The amount of the pregnancy hormone, called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) increases in the urine with the time. The earlier the test is used, the harder is to detect the hCG.
If a test
says you are not pregnant, wait for few days to pass and take another test. If
you are pregnant your hCG levels should double every 2 days, so it will be
easier for a second test to detect the hCG levels. If you think you are
pregnant but the tests you use say you are not, visit your doctor as soon as
possible.
Sometimes it could be hard to see the test result. It does not matter how faint the line is. If you see a line, you are most likely pregnant. A faint line usually means low hCG levels which could be due to an early pregnancy.
All
pregnancy home tests come with clear user instructions, which you should first read
before proceeding the test.