When to take a pregnancy test?
Do you know when to take a pregnancy test? What is the earliest time you can use an early pregnancy test at home to confirm whether you are pregnant or not? Many women ask this question every month. We will discuss what is recommended for women looking to find these answers.
Most women have a clue that they might be pregnant before seeing proof on a stick or getting the results from a blood test. They start to experience very early pregnancy signs such as sore breasts, nausea, mood swings, fatigue, food cravings, or an increase in urination. But what triggers these things to start happening? The pregnancy hormone hCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin).
What is hCG hormone in pregnancy?
What is hCG? It is a glycoprotein hormone. This substance is produced by the growing placenta during the early stages of pregnancy. This hcg hormone starts production after conception and implantation have occurred. If a fertilized egg fails to properly implant itself into your uterine lining then you will not have a successful pregnancy.
But you still need to know when to take a pregnancy test, right? Early pregnancy tests can pick up the hCG hormone as early as 5 days before your missed period. What does this mean? If your period is 28 days normally then five days before your missed period would be day 24. Why day 24? You would not have officially missed your menstrual cycle until the day after it was scheduled to come. If you really want to be safe you could take it on day 25, 26, or wait those pain-staking days until you do actually miss your cycle.
What is important to remember is that ovulation occurs 14 days before your next scheduled cycle, not 14 days from the first day of your last menstruation. Fertilization usually happens 12 to 24 hours after ovulation, once the egg has been released in to the fallopian tube. If the egg is fertilized during this crucial time implantation will take another 7 to 10 days to occur. During this time, the zygote (fertilized egg) keeps dividing and growing in to the embryo which will embed itself in to your uterine lining. After implantation, it may still take several days for YOUR body to produce enough hCG hormone to be picked up by most standard early pregnancy tests at home.
So for every woman out there whose body does not work like clockwork, and your cycle is longer, or irregular, this can cause a problem when trying to calculate things like conception, due date, and weeks pregnant at a given time. It may be tempting to find out whether you are pregnant or not early. But unless you are experiencing other early pregnancy signs, when to take a pregnancy test is after you have actually missed your period.
