Late AF but only negative HPT?? - Page 2

[Jaimee]

Oh I didn't realize the tests didn't state the gestational timing- that seems odd to me since the entire obstetric world seems to rely on the 40 week system.  Hmmm... are we sure about that? Does it state on the test "weeks since conception?"  I was making the assumption that your hCG  levels are just lower than the averages built into the test.  Please note that a single hCG level means virtually nothing by itself b/c of the great variability- including when implantation actually occurred.  It is the doubling time that matters. 

At any rate if you do want to avoid an early u/s then you could put conception 24-36 hours after that OPK+ (doesn't seem stupid now does it? ) which would be June 1st or 2nd making you 19 or 20 DPO today.  By standard 40 week calculations, that would make you 4 weeks and 4 or 5 days pregnant today and give you a due date of February 22nd or 23rd.  I agree with JMJ- I like the latest due date I can get so I personally would opt for the early u/s to avoid worse (IMO) interventions later (like induction) just in case O occurred later- accounting for the BFN you got just a few days ago. Most woman would test positive by 15 or 16 DPO so I would not be surprised  if you did O later than June 1st or 2nd.  With this information, you should be able to make a good case for needing an early us/ and you could schedule it for 2-3 weeks from now to be safe- to avoid the need for a repeat u/s if you went in too early. 
 

[jen6163]

Congrats on your BFP!!!  Yay!  I just posted a very similar post to yours!  My cycle is so regular at 28-30 days and I'm now on CD35 with no AF & all BFNs!  It's very frustrating... no clue what is going on.  

[JMJ]

Originally Posted by Jaimee 

Oh I didn't realize the tests didn't state the gestational timing- that seems odd to me since the entire obstetric world seems to rely on the 40 week system.
 

But women know that they weren't pregnant 3-4 weeks ago.  They know that they can test for a pregnancy just a couple weeks after conceiving.  Yes, it just adds to the confusion.  However, the test would obviously be negative for the first two weeks of gestation since there is no pregnancy.  The earliest positive would be at about 4 weeks gestation, so the fact that there is a positive pregnancy test, and it thinks the OP is 1-2 weeks pregnant means that it has to be testing from conception, because it couldn't be testing gestational age.

[Jaimee]

Yeah, I know, I totally get what you're saying.  It's just very strange to me.  Why wouldn't they have the test adjust and just say 3-4 weeks instead?  That would be easy enough.  Not to mention that there is all this confusion about pregnancy week-timing anyway.   It's seems quite odd and definitely confusing to consumers especially when a single hCG level does very little to predict how far along you are.  I would  imagine they would get a lot of complaints from women who were not as far or farther along than their test indicated.  I'm super curious how far along it would have said I was when I tested at 4-5 weeks since I tend to have wildly high hCG levels.

[JMJ]

It's like so many books and information on fetal development that start at the moment of conception and chronicle embryonic development in time since conception, and some time around the start of the 2nd trimester, they switch to talking about gestational age.  It's really funny because the 9 month marker is about half way between the gestational time and the time since conception.

Then you've got people like me who would just like to judge the start of pregnancy from conception, not from LMP (If you need to use it, add 2 weeks instead of making the rest of us subtract) or an arbitrary moment 2 weeks before I ovulate, but I'm just one of those abnormal people who never ovulates on time.  It's CD 31 for me, and I'm hoping to ovulate sometime in the next week (fingers crossed), and if I conceive on this cycle, nobody would be doing me a service to consider me to be 4.5 weeks pregnant right now.  It would be illegal for my LDEM to attend my birth if I wasn't at least a week early (if I do indeed ovulate in the next few days).

[Jaimee]

Originally Posted by JMJ 
if I conceive on this cycle, nobody would be doing me a service to consider me to be 4.5 weeks pregnant right now.  It would be illegal for my LDEM to attend my birth if I wasn't at least a week early (if I do indeed ovulate in the next few days).

Oh sure... I think maybe our points are crossing somehow.  I'm a late ovulator as well so my LMP due dates are always off and I always have to argue that I know my date of conception.  That's not the point I'm making. What I'm saying is how does a single test even claim to know that you're 1-2 weeks along when hCG levels vary so widely in the first place?  For example, at 23 DPO my levels were at a staggering 22,800 whereas others that far along could be in the hundreds still. With my second pregnancy they thought I was likely a month farther along than LMP indicated- of course an u/s confirmed the conception date I got from my chart and he showed up just 2 days shy of that date.  My levels just tend to be well above average for the DPO, so how far along would that test think I am?  That's my main point.  My other point is if the test is going to claim it knows how far along your are it might as well just convert that to gestation age for the masses that rely on that.  But all this is really just musings on this particular product. 

[Mamandefille]

Thanks for all the advice/suggestions. I spoke to the midwifery clinic this morning and they agreed to put down my due date as March 1st. I'm fairly sure that's a few days later than it is in reality (by my calculations, it's more like Feb. 27), but that has the added benefit of putting me first on the list of March clients and virtually guarantees that I get a midwife. If they add me to the February list, I'll be way down near the bottom and they might not have room for me, so I'll take the March 1st date for now and then we can change it later. I completely agree about erring on the side of "later" with my due date, especially since DD was born at 42 weeks, and even that was based on the latest of the 4 different due dates I had been given. (And for the record, those dates were June 6 based on unadjusted LMP, June 8 based on dating ultrasound at 8.5 weeks, June 9 based on my calculations and June 13 based on LMP, adjusted for my 32 day cycle. DD was born on June 27).

Just to clarify about the digital test that estimates how far along you are - it's the Clearblue digital pregnancy test with conception indicator. The instructions have 3 steps - 1) do the test 2) wait and 3) interpret the result. In the "interpret the result" area, it has a little chart that has columns labeled: "result", "time since conception" and "how your doctor will date your pregnancy" .

The table reads:

Result        Time since conception          How your doctor will date your pregnancy (based on a 28 day cycle)         

1-2            1-2 weeks                                          3-4 weeks

2-3            2-3 weeks                                          4-5 weeks

3+             3+ weeks                                           5+ weeks

I'm surprised that nobody else seems to have used this test before. It's rare that we have anything in Canada that isn't available widely in the States, lol. Is this test just not commonly used or is it hard to find?? It seems to be in all of our pharmacies here, although I have to actually see a FRER in any of those stores.

[Jaimee]

Thanks for posting the details Mamandefille!   That's great news that they gave you a March 1st due date so you could get in with a midwife!   I  know it can be difficult in Canada.   Will you post again if you get a dating u/s to let us know the answer to the mystery? 

[Mamandefille]

Okay, one last update here, and not such a happy one. After 3 positive pregnancy tests Monday, I started spotting Monday evening, brown at first and then bright red. It was full-blown bleeding by Tuesday morning, so I went to the doctor. He had me take another pregnancy test and it was negative. He told me that what had most likely happened was that I had never had a fertilized egg to begin with, but my body had kind of fooled itself into thinking that it did and produced *just* enough hcg to trigger a positive pregnancy test (like in the 50-100 miU range). Because the level is so low though, it can drop to zero in a matter of hours (overnight, in my case) and you can have a negative test just hours after having a positive one. He called it an "empty pole". It's not considered a miscarriage since there was never a fertilized egg to begin with, but I did have very heavy bleeding and very painful cramping Tuesday and yesterday, which I don't usually get with a normal period.

We are sad, but glad that at least this long, confusing cycle is finally over, and we can start again with a clean slate.

[Logan]

So sorry to hear that mama- take care of yourself. I didn't want to say anything before, but my first sign (before miscarrying) that something was off was the bizarre way the HcG and tests manifested in the beginning so I was a little worried about how long the HcG had taken for your tests to show as well. I hope you get another positive very soon :)

[Jaimee]

Oh!  So sorry mama!!    Sending healing thoughts your way.

Empty pole... is this different from a blighted ovum?

[JMJ]

I'm so sorry to hear that, mama.  It feels like you're losing a baby even though there was never any baby there.  Peace in your healing.