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Am I or Not?

At-home Tests Are Easy
and Reliable

By Kelly Burgess

All pregnancy tests look for a special hormone in the urine or blood that is only present when a woman is pregnant. This hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), is also called the pregnancy hormone. In sufficient quantities, the presence of the hormone is detected by the pregnancy test. Some tests use strips that you hold in a stream of urine, and some actually have you collect urine in one receptacle and then dip a separate component. Regardless of how it's done, they all operate on the same principle.

Prior to the proliferation of home pregnancy tests, women were usually asked to save their first morning urine and bring it in to the doctor's office to optimize the accuracy of their pregnancy test. Now, doctors almost universally ask their patients to take a home pregnancy test before coming in to the office. In fact, Dr. Holmgren notes that she even requires women who are close to menopausal age but missing periods to take a home pregnancy test before coming in for a hormonal evaluation to see what menopausal stage they're at. It's something they have to do anyway as part of the routine, and the home tests are so accurate that it saves the patient time and money.

Every doctor is different, of course, but, in general, unless there is some question as to the accuracy of the pregnancy test, or if the patient did more than one test and got two different answers, the pregnancy test is not repeated at the doctor's office. By the time the first prenatal appointment is scheduled, there are usually enough additional signs of pregnancy that the doctor will observe during that first exam, such as enlarged breasts and a bluish tinge to the vagina and cervix.

Want to see more?

• Answers to Your Pregnancy Test Questions
• Are You or Aren't You? The Most Common Signs of Pregnancy
• Home Pregnancy Test Sensitivity Comparison Table
• Talk about it!

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