Use your first morning pee if you can. This is the time of day when your HCG levels will be the most concentrated and easily detected. If you do it at another time of day, try to make sure your pee has been in your bladder for at least three hours.
About 10 days after conception, the fertilized egg attaches to the lining of your uterus and your body starts to make hCG. Over the next week or so, hCG levels will increase.
Levels of hCG will be strongest with first morning urine — more concentrated urine guarantees a more accurate test. Your test will still be valid if it's the afternoon or you've already had water, but first morning urine will result in a stronger results line. The stronger the line, the more accurate the test results.
That's because every woman's hormone levels can fluctuate enormously from day to day, person to person and even pregnancy to pregnancy. From the time implantation occurs, hCG levels soon begin to soar, increasing by almost 60 percent every 48 hours, give or take.
Typically, the hCG levels will double every 72 hours. The level will reach its peak in the first 8-11 weeks of pregnancy and then will decline and level off for the remainder of the pregnancy.
The hormone hCG is crucial because home pregnancy tests essentially work by measuring levels of hCG in a woman's urine. Within one day of implantation, hCG levels increase by 50% every day.
Symptoms of rising hCG levels can include fatigue, nausea/vomiting (aka morning sickness), dizziness or light-headedness, breast tenderness, and feeling emotionally sensitive.
The hCG can be detected in the blood or urine. A lot of changes take place in a woman's body when she becomes pregnant. One of the quickest changes in the production of hCG. The hormone begins to show up in the urine ten days from the day the woman conceives.
Although you may take a pregnancy test at night, the test may be a false negative since urine tends to be more diluted at night. This is why doctors recommend taking a pregnancy test in the morning, especially in the first couple of weeks of pregnancy.
As measured at 16 days after conception, those with hCG levels in the 75th percentile or higher had a miscarriage rate of 8%, compared to a miscarriage rate of 16.7% among those whose hCG levels were in the 25th percentile or lower. Falling levels of hCG may also mean a miscarriage is very likely.
During early pregnancy, the amount of HCG in blood and urine rises quickly — doubling every 2 to 3 days. That means if you wait a day or two after your missed period to take the test, and you are pregnant, it's more likely the test will find HCG and show a positive result.
Day 1 = day of detection (hCG > 0.015 ng/mL).
Slow-rising quantitative hCG levels, at least in early pregnancy, may be a sign of an ectopic pregnancy. 3 Since a ruptured ectopic pregnancy can be dangerous, your doctor may recommend a transvaginal ultrasound to look for signs of an ectopic pregnancy.
Causes may include a placental tumor or molar pregnancy, in which a non-viable egg implants in the uterus and secretes the hCG hormone. Higher levels of hCG may also represent pregnancy with multiples, or an inaccurate measurement of gestational age (the pregnancy could be further along than expected).
HCG is at its highest level in the morning when urine is fresh and not diluted by the liquid you drink during the day. If you test in the afternoon, your urine may not have enough HCG to detect.
Conclusions: Though rare, a live fetus at the end of the first trimester is possible if even if there is a slow rise of sera hCG levels where there is at least one instance when the hCG levels do not double in two days.
HCG levels in pregnancy
In real life, blood pregnancy tests will be positive (> 2 mIU/ml) by 10-11 days after HCG injection or LH surge. In general, the HCG level will double every 2-3 days in early pregnancy. 85% of normal pregnancies will have the HCG level double every 72 hours.
When the HCG level reached 7200 mIU/ml, a yolk sac was seen in every patient. Ten of 22 patients with HCG between 1000 and 7200 mIU/ml had a visible yolk sac. Every patient with an HCG level greater than 10,800 mIU/ml had a visible embryo with a heartbeat.
1500-2000IU/mL of hCG) may be either a chemical pregnancy (in the uterus) or a tubal abortion and an ultimate differential diagnosis may never become clinically possible.
It has been previously suggested (10) that a 53% rise after 2 days will identify 99% of pregnancies that are viable, when the initial hCG <5000 mIU/mL. The current data suggest that this is likely true for women with an initial hCG value below 1500.