Home Pregnancy Tests: Are They Reliable?
Home pregnancy tests are a tool that you have that will help you to determine if you are pregnant. There are many of these tests available today, all of which can help you to determine sooner than your missed period if you may be pregnant.
If you are trying to get pregnant, these tests will help you to know very soon if it has actually happened. In most situations, they are very accurate. You can obtain them readily, use them and know within minutes. Yet, purchasing a quality, approved product is important, as not all products work the same.
How Do They Work?
Early pregnancy tests work by detecting special hormones in your urine stream. These hormones are not normally seen in the body unless you are pregnant. They are the body’s tools to help craft your body into the home for an embryo to grow and flourish. In particular, home pregnancy tests are looking for a hormone called Human Chorionic Gonadotropin or hCG. If you have a high amount of this hormone in your urine stream, then it is likely that you are pregnant. These tests are performing the same test that your doctor would use in his office to determine if you are pregnant. In order for them to be accurate, though, you have to use them exactly as they are directed.
The amount of hCG in your urine will continue to grow as much as doubling every two to three days during the first weeks of pregnant. This amount enters the urine when the placenta begins to develop and releases the hormone into the woman’s blood stream. At the same time, the hormone will pass from the blood stream into the urine, which is why it is an effective tool at measuring if you are pregnant. The process of getting to this point, though can take some time.
For example, once you become pregnant, with the egg fertilized in the fallopian tube, the egg then has to travel to the uterus. That process can take as long as nine days. Once there, it will implant into the uterus and begin to grow. At that time, the egg’s placenta begins to grow, which is what will later excrete this hormone.
Accuracy
When considering the accuracy of these early tests of pregnancy, there are several factors that will determine it. Each woman will have a different amount of accuracy, too. The number of days in your menstrual cycle will determine when you can become pregnant. More so, you may not know the date that the you became pregnant, nor the date that implantation happens. Plus, each home test will have a different amount of accuracy based on how sensitive it is to the hormone.
More Ways To Tell
If this is your second pregnancy, you may know that there are a number of early signs of pregnancy that your body gives off, including implantation bleeding, fatigue and tender breasts. These can be contributing factors to helping you to know if you are in fact pregnant. In first time pregnancy including teen pregnancy, you may not recognize these signs of pregnancy. Yet, in many cases, including teenage pregnancy, you can purchase home pregnancy tests to help you to determine if you are pregnant. If you believe that you are, or a test shows that you are pregnant, seek out your doctor’s care as soon as possible. They will likely perform more conclusive tests to determine that you are pregnant. From here, they will determine when you need to be seen and if there are any risks during pregnancy you should be aware of.