How Soon After Conception Can I Take A Pregnancy Test?

Taking a pregnancy test too soon after conception can, obviously, lead to inaccurate results. The most accurate results for a pregnancy test will not occur until after your period is due. Every pregnancy test that is on the market today are most likely to give you the most accurate results after this time. Still, if you have been working at conception for a while, it can be difficult to wait those extra days. You may want to try much earlier. If you do try earlier, don’t take a negative as an absolute that you are not pregnant. You can’t discount pregnancy until you get your period, so there is always hope, up until that point.

One important thing to understand is that every woman’s body is different. The process of conception can, therefore, vary greatly from one woman to the next. On top of this, pregnancy can occur several days after conception. In some cases, it can be as much as a week after conception before the fertilized egg actually implants in the uterus, and the hormone hCG (Human Chorionnic Gonadotropin) starts to increase.

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This raises another point. It is important to understand how exactly a pregnancy test works. A pregnancy test will measure the amount of hCG that is in your system. As your pregnancy progresses, the amount of hCG in your system will increase. At 10 days past ovulation, for example, the average woman has an hCG measurement of right around 25 mIU. This amount doubles to 50 mIU at 12 days past ovulation, and then doubles again to 100 mIU at around two weeks past ovulation. Different tests have different levels of sensitivity; if you use a home pregnancy test that is sensitive to 100 mIU, it will not tell you that you are pregnant if your level of hCG is only 75 mIU.

So, the bottom line is that you need to figure that implantation will take place around 3-7 days after conception. Beyond that, implantation will occur between 6 and 12 days after ovulation. So, the very earliest after conception that you could take a pregnancy test would be 9 days; and, you may not have an accurate reading on a pregnancy test until as many as 19 days after conception.

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This entry was posted under About Pregnancy Tests.