Home Pregnancy Test

Q. What’s the right time to take a home pregnancy test?

A. The newer home pregnancy tests claim to be able to pick up a pregnancy as early as six days before your missed period. But we’ve found that this isn’t always the case. If you get a positive result on one of these tests before your missed period, you probably are pregnant. But a negative test isn’t conclusive. If your result is negative but you miss your period afterward, we recommend you repeat the test.

This advice is especially important for women undergoing fertility treatment. We’ve had women in our practice who took an at-home pregnancy test early, got a negative result, and then stopped taking their hormonal fertility medications because they thought they weren’t pregnant. But in some cases a blood test at the fertility center showed that they were pregnant, and by stopping the hormone supplements early these women could have jeopardized their pregnancy.

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