Those who had successful pregnancies, can you offer reassurance?

27 replies

Kateeeeeeee · 07/01/2025 10:12

First time being pregnant and I am finding myself going down a rabbit hole with comparing tests and line progressions. 😭
I keep seeing those on forums and wonder if this is more damaging than helpful. I know how silly this is especially since I use very uncommon brands and most people online are comparing the same popular brands. But I realised that many others have darker lines than I do at the same DPO and it kind of worries me. There are so many stories of women saying how their lines didn’t get very dark and it ended up in a chemical/miscarriage or even ectopic! 😱
This massively freaks me out and I am really in need of some reassurance.

My test lines are getting steadily darker, which should be a good sign, but today at 18DPO the lines are still not as dark as the control line. Most posts where pregnancy has progressed well say they had even darker lines than the control line at this point… I don’t know if that’s due to the tests I am using or if I really should be concerned.

Interestingly I have to add that the clearblue did get as dark as the control line at 16DPO. So maybe the cheapie strips are just not as strong? I may be totally overthinking this. I am especially nervous because my boobs are a lot less sore today than the past week and that’s the only symptom I was having! 😭
would love any of your thoughts and reassurance!

Those who had successful pregnancies, can you offer reassurance?

OP posts:

Pinkypup · 08/01/2025 15:17

Superscientist · 08/01/2025 13:59

Pregnancy 1 tested 5 days late dye stealer, my daughter was born at 38 weeks
Pregnancy 2 tested 5 days late dye stealer, miscarried at 10 weeks and took 3 weeks to get a negative pregnancy test again.
Pregnancy 3 tested 2 days late strong positive not dye stealer. Miscarried at 9 weeks took 3 weeks to get a negative pregnancy test.

The tests tell you pregnant or not. They don't tell you the health of the pregnancy. After the first few weeks your HCG levels are so high that that even if something has gone wrong it will take weeks for your HCG to be low enough to see the effect on a pregnancy test. The day I miscarried my second pregnancy my HCG was 17000, it halved in 16 hours which was 8500 so still way above the threshold. I had awful sickness in all three pregnancy and was on antiemetics for a 3 days after my first miscarriage and had nausea for a week after the loss.

Having been on both sides of fate I can say that one of the hardest parts of the first trimester is the not knowing. If you have tested positive after your period is late and you have a good strong positive that's the time to put the tests away. They won't tell you one way or another. Keep busy, up the self care, do things that help your anxious mind and hope for the best. Scans are the only thing that tell you about whether the pregnancy is ok and even those are subjective and only a snapshot in time you can have a good scan and lose the pregnancy on the drive home. In my third pregnancy it took 3 scans at the epu over 3 weeks to confirm the loss. The 8ish weeks to the first scan from positive test can be long and fretful!

Ok this is what I wanted to say but this was put so much better.

I’m so sorry for your losses x

BeautyAndTheBump1 · 08/01/2025 16:45

I got into a deep hole of the line progressions with my 2nd pregnancy, despite having a successful first pregnancy and no previous losses either. It stressed me out, I started to make my husband worried too, at 21 dpo my test line was as dark as the control line. I ended up stopping testing as I was driving myself mad. Baby is currently napping on me now at 3 months old 😊

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