Pregnancy Test

You've missed your period. You may have noticed a change in your mood. Maybe someone has told you you're glowing? Maybe you've noticed food cravings or the smell of your co-worker's chicken sandwich is making you nauseous. All of these things can certainly happen for a variety of reasons. However, they're all also possible early signs of a woman being pregnant.

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Whether you've been trying for months or you're experiencing this completely unplanned, the anxiety about knowing whether or not you're pregnant can be overwhelming. You want to find out as soon as possible and until then, a million thoughts beginning with the words "What if" are going through your mind. Pregnancy tests are surrounded by so many wives tales and it can be frustrating if you're unsure of when you could have become pregnant and the kind of over-the-counter test you should pick up from your local convenience or drug store.

A woman generally becomes pregnant two weeks after the first day of her last period. If you can pinpoint the start of your last period and then move forward two weeks, you'll have the approximate date of conception, according to information reported on the Mayo Clinic website. It's generally advised, though, that a woman waits about a week after a missed period before testing for pregnancy because the hormone that most tests use as an indicator of pregnancy is produced more rapidly after the fertilized egg implants in a woman's uterus, which occurs about three weeks after conception, or one week after a missed period.

There are two ways for a woman to test for pregnancy: blood and urine. Urine tests, or home pregnancy tests, are purchased at convenience and drug stores. Blood tests are administered by a health care provider, can detect pregnancy earlier than a urine test, however, may take longer for the results to get back to the subject.

Both blood and urine tests gauge the likelihood of a woman to be pregnant by the amount of the pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin in her urine and blood. As mentioned briefly before, the hCG begins to be produced about six days after the fertilized egg implants in a woman's uterus. The amount of hCG in a woman's body will continue to increase as the pregnancy continues, meaning the longer a woman waits to take a pregnancy test, the more accurate the test result will be.