How Early Can Pregnancy Be Detected
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When can I know if I am pregnant is a question many women want to know because in reality many when are not aware that they are actually pregnant. The whole question of when am I pregnant is further muddied by the fact that most women have different symptoms’. Some are aware of a bitter or metallic taste in their mouth immediately and others feel the baby attaching itself to the uterus wall.
To feel pregnant immediately you have to be very astutely in tune and aware of your body’s natural rhythms. However a number of women do get a pain which is quite pronounced when the baby attaches itself to the uterine wall when she is first pregnant and this is normally several days after conception, but well before a missed period. Sometimes there is a slight staining that may be a pink color or dark brown when the egg is implanting itself and this may be accompanied by cramps, however the cramps are not similar to a period pain.
The majority of women are first alerted to the fact that they may be pregnant when there is a missed period. In fact not all women keep an accurate diary and they may not know exactly when their last period was. If you want to know if you are pregnant early when trying for a baby then keep a diary of your menstrual cycle.
There is online software available to chart your own fertility cycle, but in reality it cannot be accurate, it can only talk about the average time within the cycle and every woman’s cycle can be different. Without the date that you ovulated you cannot when is the earliest date that you can reasonably expect to have a pregnancy test. Before you can take a quantitative test to see if you are pregnant, which incidentally can be tested accurately with home pregnancy tests you need to ascertain when you were fertile and to pinpoint that you need to know specifically when you ovulated.
The most important tool in your armory for testing for ovulation is a thermometer, an ordinary body temperature thermometer; it can be a digital one or the old type bulb thermometer. When you ovulate your temperature will be raised and it will stay raised. However to know what a raised temperature is you need to know what it was before. The most accurate time to check temperature is instantly on waking before you do anything else at all to raise your temperature.
All pregnancy test detect the hormone Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (Hcg) even the doctors blood test. From a clinical point of view not all pregnancy tests are equal. The hormone Hcg is measured in the blood or urine, either in the in thousands of international units, which are expressed scientifically as mIU.Home pregnancy tests brands will indicate how sensitive they are by registering the level of Hcg necessary in the urine to register an accurate pregnancy test.
Obviously when you are first pregnant the level of the hormone is very low and that means that the home pregnancy kits that register a sensitivity of 20 mIU/ml are more sensitive than tests that need 50 or 100 mIU/ml. the lower the number on the packet the sooner that an accurate pregnancy test is possible and in some cases that is as early as eight days after the egg has implanted itself in the uterus wall. If you are not certain of the sensitivity of the test ask your pharmacist or medical practitioner.
It goes without saying that the first morning urine will be the strongest, because the hormone will have had a chance to build up over night. It must be remembered that low levels of the hormone are present in the body without a woman being pregnant. As a general guide most pregnant women register 25 mIU at ten days past ovulation or (dpo), 50 mIU at 12 dpo, 100 mIU at around two weeks dpo.
Blood tests can determine pregnancy as low as between 5 to 10 mIU/hCG, though with levels of 5 mIU, there is an enormous risk that that level can be detected in a woman who is not pregnant. Doctors will normally confirm a home urine test with a blood test which is obviously an accurate indication of pregnancy because doctors don’t like to test before you have missed a period.
