Friday, February 6, 2009

Comprehensive guide for pregnancy testing

By Alberta Dowse

Fortunately, nowadays women don't have to wait for a pregnancy sign to find out if they have conceived or not and that's due to pregnancy tests, which seem to be the best method for this purpose. Although there are two types of pregnancy tests(blood tests and urine ones) most women prefer the urine ones firstly because they offer them the possibility to find out if they are pregnant or not in the privacy of their own homes (while those blood tests can only be taken on a clinic) and also because they are much cheaper than the blood ones.

Pregnancy tests have a simple functioning principle: they use chemical reactions to detect the presence of the pregnancy hormone(hCG) in a woman's body. This hormone only appears at least 6 days after ovulation, so taking a test prior to that moment is practically useless, since it can't provide an accurate result.

So, the earliest moment you can take a pregnancy test having the possibility to get an accurate result is the 7'th day after the moment you think you have conceived, but if you want the most accurate one you can follow the doctors' recommendation and take it 2 weeks after; or you can follow the tests' directions and take it the day you have missed your period (for most home tests).

There are certain features that distinguish pregnancy tests from one another: the easiness in reading and use, the results(how fast are they?), the accuracy, and so on. Home tests are usually taken alone, but that's no reason to panic, since they're made for the average person and not for professionals, so anyone should be able to handle one with proper instructions. The idea is pretty simple: just remove the seal and hold the test stick under your urine stream for 5 seconds or so; after that, all you have to do is interpret the result: one line means not pregnant - two lines means pregnant. Sometimes, confusion can be created - the second line could be a faint one, so you should go for a more sensitive test or a digital test, that spells it out for you: "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant".

It's obvious that, nowadays all you have to do in order to find out if you're pregnant is take a test. What kind of test, it's your decision, but most women choose home tests because of the intimacy they provide, the lower price and the high accuracy(over 98-99% in most cases). This way, the result is delivered to you in only 2-3 minutes, and that's another big plus.

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