Waiting on Those Two Blue Lines
Submitted by Erin
This whole "Am I pregnant or not?" thing is driving me crazy! In my perfect world, I would wake up the morning after having sex, pee on a stick and know right then and there whether that egg was fertilized. Having to wait days (weeks!) to take a pregnancy test is stress that a possibly pregnant woman simply doesn't need. Someone needs to get on it and invent the morning-after test. It'd be worth a fortune.
I've been scouring the Internet to find out exactly when is really the absolute, without-a-doubt earliest point that a pregnancy test can come back positive. Of course, sources vary. While I did find a few articles that said I could take a home pregnancy test as many as seven days before my period, the general consensus online was that it's best to wait until the day that your period should start. Are they crazy?! That seems like an eternity!
Maybe I'm the crazy one, but I went to the drugstore and bought a pregnancy test. The box said, "Positive results sooner than any other test!" across the front. Inside, the directions said that if taken four days before a missed period, a woman who is actually pregnant has a 53% chance of getting a positive result. Those odds are good enough for me.
My period is due in five days. I explained to my husband over dinner last night that if I took the test, I'd have a 53% chance of getting an accurate result. For some reason, my husband (who used to be a math teacher) didn't like those odds. He rationally pointed out that if I just wait until Friday, the day my period is actually due, I'll have a 98% chance of getting an accurate result. According to Mr. Rational (and, I must add, Mr. Frugal), it's a waste of money to use a pregnancy test on a day with 50-50 odds. Whatever.
I spent the rest of the evening stewing, the pregnancy test sitting on my bathroom counter, tempting me, while my husband eyed me suspiciously. My mind was whirling. "What if… what if I do get a positive result? We can tell our parents early and start planning and get all happy and excited right away! It's just one pregnancy test, just one. What's $10 in the whole scheme of things anyway?"
I took the test this morning. It was negative. The box says that three days before a missed period, you have a 68% chance of an accurate result. Here we go again. Am I insane? How can I stop obsessing? Help distract me!
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