Home Pregnancy Test: What’s In That Little Stick?

Home pregnancy tests might have saved modern women from having to go to their doctors all the time, but there is still a mysterious and inscrutable air around them.  How can a little strip of chemical encased in plastic concoct a whole chemistry experiment by itself?

The Mechanism

Pregnancy test mechanisms are actually rather straightforward. When an egg is fertilized by sperm and implants itself in the uterus, the body begins to construct a placenta. This organ, or biological tissue, acts as a logistic platform between your body and your baby. And its first shipment tends to be the hCG hormone, which gets rapidly circulated in your bloodstream and throughout your system.

From almost undetectable amounts, the concentration of hCG reaches an exponential scale for a while, doubling every two or three days. And once it hits a particular level, it becomes detectable by home pregnancy tests.

This is why these kits are always quite time-sensitive. There is no telling when exactly this rise in hCG will go past the threshold, and a 24-hour period might make all the difference. The instruction leaflets generally advise users to refrain from using the kit until the seventh day after a missed period. But since many of us have wildly irregular periods anyway, the whole time-gauging exercise can be quite futile.

Why Visit the Doctor?

If you are feeling all the other symptoms despite a series of negative test results, you might want to visit a doctor for a blood test. Since the hormone circulates in the blood for a while before it enters the renal system and gets excreted through urine, the blood concentration levels are significantly higher than their urine counterparts.

Still, there is a good chance that the doctor will tell you to wait for a few more days. In that case, why don’t you just sleep on it and try a home pregnancy test when the time is ripe? That will save you both headache and heartache!