How soon can you take a pregnancy test
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Summary: How soon can I satisfy my desire to know whether I am pregnant is a burning question for many girls who perhaps don’t want a baby and fear that a pregnancy is possible and equally many women longing for a baby want to know how soon can they test for pregnancy.
The question that really needs answering is how soon after conception can I take a pregnancy test? Modern women want to know whether or not they can take a home pregnancy test in the privacy of their home before they have missed a period. For instance if you know that you are five days away from your period, but you have symptoms of being pregnant Can you get a reliable answer from a home pregnancy test?
Home pregnancy tests can be positive as early as eight days after fertilization, which means a couple of days before your missed period, as most women have a period a fortnight after ovulating. However the operative word here is “can”, a home pregnancy test is possible, but a reliable home pregnancy test result cannot be guaranteed, before a missed period. There are several case scenarios possible from a home pregnancy kit taken too early. The first is that it is a false negative result. The pregnancy result may say not pregnant but it means that you are not showing signs of pregnancy in terms of an endocrinal change. In simple terms your hormones have not yet caught up with the fact that you are pregnant, you could have become pregnant later in your cycle.
For instance the first day of bleeding counts as the first day of menstruation, and at the same time the pituitary gland releases a follicle stimulating hormone commonly called FSH. A follicle is the scientific name for the eggs in their sacs, and by stimulating they begin to mature. However although every woman starts off with about twenty sacs only one or perhaps two will fully mature. As the follicles get larger more estrogen is developed the wombs lining starts to thicken so that it can hold a fertilized if you have conceived. This stage is called the follicular stage of menstruation and it can last from between six and twenty one days. During this stage women are semi fertile because there is no sure scientific way how long it will be before ovulation takes place.
It is the uncertainty of this time span which can throw rather inaccurate pregnancy test results both from a home pregnancy test and from a doctor’s pregnancy test. As the estrogen reaches a certain level it triggers the pituitary to produce a luteinizing hormone (LH) and the rise of this hormone causes the most mature egg sac to burst, releasing the egg into the fallopian tube. It is this process which is ovulation and it is within a few days of this that a woman can be considered to be most fertile.
Some women are aware of ovulation as they get a slight twinge in their lower back or abdomen whilst others have a discharge of pinkish looking blood which is a streak. Whilst it is perfectly normal for some women to be aware of ovulating, it is also perfectly normal not to know when you have ovulated. As a result of this calculating when ovulation took place is not always an exact science by twinges. A woman is considered most fertile at this time just before ovulation because it is possible for sperm to stay alive in the body for seven days, so any act of intercourse within that week makes it possible for women to conceive. A woman’s egg will live for just short of a day after it is released and this increases the time window in which it is possible to get pregnant. To make matters more uncertain if a second egg matured then it will be released twenty four later and remain alive for a day.
Given this window in which a woman can conceive it is easy to understand why a pregnancy test may record a not regnant when the women is pregnant, but became pregnant a few days later and too early for any hormonal changes to register on any type of pregnancy test. Occasionally home pregnancy tests register a false positive which states that you are pregnant when you are not. This is known as a chemical pregnancy because you are registering the chemical changes but there is no fetus and therefore no baby.
All in all you can take a pregnancy test before your missed period, but the result may not be correct and either way that misinformation could lead to a lot of unnecessary grief and worry. To be safe wait until you have missed a period.
