Normally, a pregnancy test can be taken up to five or six days days before your expected period is due. Tests that can detect pregnancy at this early stage include the First Response Early Results Pregnancy Test, the Clearblue Early Detection Pregnancy Test the Clearblue Digital Early Detection Pregnancy Test and the Conceive Plus Pregnancy Test.
Your hCG levels will rise rapidly at the beginning of a pregnancy, so if you need as accurate a result as possible, take a test on the day of your missed period. Whatever the results, be it negative or positive, your result will be over 99% accurate.
When To Do A Pregnancy Test – Morning, Afternoon or Evening?
If possible do the pregnancy test in the morning, as soon as you can. At this time your hCG levels will be at their highest. If this is not possible (or perhaps you prefer to do a test sooner rather than later), try not to go to the toilet for a few hours. Then take the test.
One thing you should avoid doing is drinking lots of fluids in order to make yourself wee. This can actually cause the hormone levels in your urine to be diluted. This can then cause the chances of you getting an incorrect result to increase.
How To Read The Results
Always read the instructions carefully before taking any pregnancy test. This will help you to clearly understand how those little blue lines work! Also, check the expiry date on the test as they normally are only able to be stored for 1-2 years before they go out of date.
Most tests are similar in that they generally have two windows for results to show up in. One window is a control window which will normally show one line before taking the test. This is in place to indicate that the test is working. Many Clearblue pregnancy tests are designed like this.
After you have urinated on the test and waited for the correct amount of time, you will see a single line, or two lines in the shape of a cross, in the results window. The cross means that you are pregnant. Just one line means that you are not.
If your test only has one window, it is normally the case that the test line and the result line will appear side by side if you are pregnant. If there is only one line in the window, you are not pregnant. It’s worth pointing out that even the very faintest of lines in the results window can mean that you are actually pregnant.
Photo by Daniel Gregoire on Unsplash
Zoom Baby is a leading supplier of Pregnancy Tests and Ovulation Test Kits
This post first appeared in October 2019 and has been regularly updated since
