Best time to take a pregnancy test

Try to take a home pregnancy test first thing in the morning. First morning urine is when hCG levels are most easily detected. If not, make sure your urine had been in your bladder for at least 4 hours.

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You suspect you’re pregnant when you have symptoms like morning sickness and fatigue.

You know you’re pregnant when you take a test.

Most women take buy a home pregnancy kit because they are inexpensive and fast. What do you need to know to make sure you get good results?

How to take one

You can get a home pregnancy test (or HPT) at almost any drug store or the medicine section of superstore. Depending on the brand and how many tests come in the box, it will run you from $8 to $20.

Most popular HPTs work in a similar way. You basically urinate on the stick provided in the test. (Some involve collecting urine in a cup and then dipping the stick into it, but this is not so common anymore.)

Then you wait a few minutes, how many minutes depends on the brand. Once the time is up, you check out the “result window.” The kit will have some indication like a line or a plus symbol that appears if you are pregnant. Your kit will tell you what to look for.

It does not matter how faint or dark the line is, a line means the result is positive.

Most tests also have a line or symbol that works as a “control indicator”. In other words if the control indictor does NOT appear in the results window, the test itself is not working properly, no matter what result you get. You will have to take another home pregnancy test.;

How a home pregnancy test works

Pregnancy tests look for a special hormone in the urine or blood that is only there when a woman is pregnant. This pregnancy hormone, or hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), is made in your body when a fertilized egg implants in the uterus. This usually happens about 6 days after conception. However, for some women, however, the embryo implant later than 6 days. Either way, the amount of hCG in a pregnant woman’s body increases drastically with each passing day of pregnancy.

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