Pregnancy test guide
The old days of counting the days and looking for pregnancy signs are now long gone, since pregnancy tests were invented and they can tell you more precise than ever if you’re pregnant or not. There are two types of such tests: clinic tests(based on blood samples) and home tests(based on urine samples). It’s obvious the second ones are women’s favorites, since they are very practical(they offer the possibility to find out about a potential pregnancy in the comfort of your own home), they’re way cheaper than the others and they’re very accurate too.
The functioning principle of all pregnancy tests is the same: they try to detect the presence of the human Chorionic Gonadotropin hormone(hCG) in a woman’s body, which indicates a pregnancy. But it only appears at least 6 days after ovulation, meaning that if you don’t identify the moment very precisely, your result may be compromised – meaning that it will give a negative result no matter what, since the hormone is not yet present.
Practically, the earliest moment for taking a test with real chances of getting an accurate result is the 7th day after the day you think you may have conceived, but if you were to follow the doctor’s recommendation, you should take it 2 weeks from that moment; if you were to follow the test’s instructions, you should take it the day you have missed your period – that’s what most of them recommend.
There are certain features that distinguish pregnancy tests from one another: the easiness in reading and use, the results(how fast are they?), the accuracy, and so on. Home tests are usually taken alone, but that’s no reason to panic, since they’re made for the average person and not for professionals, so anyone should be able to handle one with proper instructions. The idea is pretty simple: just remove the seal and hold the test stick under your urine stream for 5 seconds or so; after that, all you have to do is interpret the result: one line means not pregnant – two lines means pregnant. Sometimes, confusion can be created – the second line could be a faint one, so you should go for a more sensitive test or a digital test, that spells it out for you: “Pregnant” or “Not Pregnant”.
It’s obvious that, nowadays all you have to do in order to find out if you’re pregnant is take a test. What kind of test, it’s your decision, but most women choose home tests because of the intimacy they provide, the lower price and the high accuracy(over 98-99% in most cases). This way, the result is delivered to you in only 2-3 minutes, and that’s another big plus.
