Taking a home pregnancy test can trigger many emotions -- excitement, anxiety, and if you’ve been unfortunate in receiving a negative test result after a negative test result, frustration and anger. False negative pregnancy tests are much more common than false positives. While a urinary tract infection (UTI) is unlikely to cause a false negative it could do so, at least in theory. If you have a UTI, see a doctor and then retake the test a few days later.
A false positive pregnancy test is very rare, but false negatives are extraordinarily common. That's comforting news to people struggling with infertility, especially those dealing with the chronic frustration of month after month of negative tests. Of course, averages and data about pregnancy tests don’t tell you much about your individual case, or what you can expect as you navigate the choppy waters of infertility. So what do you need to know about false positive and false pregnancy tests? Here’s an overview.
About 10% of women and 1 in 8 couples have trouble getting or staying pregnant. If you struggle with infertility, you may feel overwhelmed, alternating between feelings of despondency and hope, frustration and excitement, all centered around the potential to become a parent. Infertility is a whirlwind of emotions, and it can often involve a wide range of medical procedures and tests.
Infertility can be extremely stressful. It cuts to the core of one of the most basic human instincts -- the desire to have children. No wonder people struggling with infertility report higher rates of depression, anxiety, and stress. One study even found that couples struggling with infertility are three times more likely to divorce than other couples. People experiencing stress while trying to get pregnant may worry about the effects of stress on fertility. For most people, stress will not affect fertility. Here’s what you need to know.
After a year of trying to conceive, 12-15% of couples are still unable to get pregnant. That’s a scary figure for anyone who hopes to become a parent soon. Even scarier is the fact that there are rarely symptoms if any at all when it comes to infertility. So you might not know if you’re among the unlucky few until you’ve spent months staring at negative pregnancy tests. What if you could reduce the uncertainty and shorten the timeline to pregnancy? Fertility testing before you begin trying to get pregnant can do exactly that. So is it a good idea? Here’s what you need to know.
Ladies, did you know that when you’re born you already have all the eggs your body will ever produce? You enter the world with hundreds of thousands of eggs that will remain inactive until puberty. This is a key reason why fertility declines more quickly with age among women. While men’s bodies continually produce sperm, a woman cannot make more eggs.
Infertility can be agonizing. You want to spend your time shopping for maternity clothes, comparing doctors or midwives, and setting up your nursery. Instead you find yourself spending more time, month after month, hoping against the odds that you’ll see that second line on your pregnancy test.
Waiting for that second line to appear on a pregnancy test can feel like the longest three minutes of your life. If you wait month after month with no results, it’s easy to feel demoralized. One of the most persistent and harmful myths about fertility issues is that fertility is a matter of luck. If you’re unlucky enough to be infertile, then it’s untreatable without costly procedures that are unlikely to work anyway.
People considering fertility treatments often focus on in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF can be highly successful for the right person, but it’s also expensive. Intrauterine insemination (IUI) offers a success rate of 10-20% per cycle. This makes it a highly effective treatment, and one that is much more affordable than IVF. For couples with unexplained infertility and some other fertility issues, it’s a great option. Moreover, because it’s more affordable, most families can pursue several cycles of IUI, increasing the odds of a successful pregnancy without breaking the budget.
If you have dreams of becoming a parent, fertility issues are among the most challenging issues you can face. Thankfully, modern science has advanced quite a bit in recent years, allowing for female infertility to be more accurately tested for and diagnosed than ever before. For couples and individuals alike, the sensitive nature of infertility is certainly an emotional time, and perhaps nothing is more frustrating than a false feeling of success.
