#WaitToWee – what you need to know about pregnancy tests
We’ve launched our WaitToWee campaign – to raise awareness about using early pregnancy tests and calling for clearer packaging and instructions
Every week we see stories of heartbreak and panic in our forum from women who get confusing or conflicting results from their pregnancy tests. We’ve become increasingly concerned about the number of false negatives and false positives (usually chemical pregnancies) MFMers are experiencing.
The majority of these come from using early pregnancy tests. These aren’t as accurate when used early (before the day your period is due).
We felt it needed more investigation so we launched a survey – speaking to 1151 MFMers who had taken an early pregnancy test in the past 2 years.
What we found confirmed that there are just too many women – 1 in 15 – getting a ‘wrong’ result from their early pregnancy test.
Why does this matter so much?
Because taking a pregnancy test is a life-changing moment. Why go through those nerve-racking few minutes if you can’t trust the result?
We’re not against early pregnancy tests – we know there’s a market for them. We just want you to know what the outcome might mean for you.
The simple facts are:
Early pregnancy tests are not as accurate if you test as early as marketed
Early pregnancy tests may pick up very early miscarriages
But we don’t think this is clear enough on early pregnancy tests. So we’re calling for the manufacturers to work with us to clarify and standardise the packaging and instructions.
In a nutshell
If you use a pregnancy test early as advertised:
- An early negative result can’t be trusted – it may just be too early to test
- An early positive result sadly doesn’t guarantee you’ll stay pregnant
Many very early pregnancies naturally don’t progress (we don’t know how many but some researchers think it could be 1 in 4). Before the development of early pregnancy tests most of these early miscarriages were missed – you just had your period as normal or a few days late. Do you really want to know you've been pregnant briefly and then lost the pregnancy?
We say, if you want to be sure #WaitToWee until the day AFTER your period is due before testing.
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