Confused! When to test??

[itinkthereforeima]

I have been reading so much stuff on when to take a pregnancy test I'm muddled! Everyone's talking about the two week wait, but I keep reading that the best day to test is the first day of your missed period, which I think for me is only one week after ovulating, definitely not two! Surely two weeks is the last day of your bleed, not the first?

Average luteal phase (the bit after ovulating) is 14 days for a 28 day cycle. Some have longer, some have shorter phases. If your luteal phase is under 10 days i hear it can sometimes be harder to conceive and that you can take certain things to regulate it.

So 'usually' 14 days after ovulation is the first day of AF, hence the two week wait. But everyone's different :)

Your cycle is quite different to the average which is 14 days between ovulating and your period starting. Normal is considered between 10 and 16 days. It takes a while for the egg to travel down the fallopian tube and implant and for your body to produce hcg (which is what a pregnancy test measures). The very earliest you should test is 10 days after ovulation and even then, positive lines would be faint.

Ok, thanks for your responses! Another question, is it just generally better to wait longer? Or will the hgc concentration change our anything? Like, is there a small window of time where testing will work, or does the hormone level in the urine stay high enough to be detectable past the 14 days?

I'm probably the wrong (or right) person to ask, after 2 months of early losses. Midwife at the hospital told me to try and wait 2 weeks after my missed period to test as if pregnant, hormone levels would be so high that any tests would be pretty obvious.

So pretty much, leave it as long as you can. If pregnant, your hormone levels will double every day or two and stay up, so the longer you leave it the clearer it will be on the test.

Ok I'll just wait as long as possible then, thanks!

There is no window for testing no. The concentration of hcg grows exponentially. You should get an accurate result from 14 days post ovulation.

The book Taking Charge of Your Fertility is very good if you want to undersstand the process a little better.

Are you sure about when you ovulate? How long are your cycles? As others have said, if you only have one week between ovulation and AF, that would be fairly unusual and could lead to issues.

Double checking your ovulation date because you don’t want to get that timing wrong!

The hormone increases and increases throughout a pregnancy. So the only way it would go down was if it is sadly a miscarriage and then hormone decreases after.