Period late and negative pregnancy test – a frequent situation

     So far, women have thought that a missed period, or even a late one is a sign of pregnancy. It is fairly understandable why they were trusting those “natural” signs – because there wasn’t any other way to find out if they were pregnant or not. Fortunately, nowadays women have not only one, but two accurate possibilities to find out the truth: clinic pregnancy tests and home ones; due to their advantages, the home ones are the most demanded.

     Women that still think that a missed or late period is a pregnancy sign are sometimes right. Therefore, most of them panic when they face out the situation of a “period late and negative pregnancy test” – and they don’t know what to think: are they pregnant or not?. This is a very frequent situation and you don’t have to worry, because there could be many possible reasons for this, and most of them can be avoided.

     First of all, you have to know that a late period is not necessarily a pregnancy sign. Your period can be late from some outsider causes, the most frequent of them being: a very stressful period, a sudden weight loss or an organic illness.

     On the other hand, a late period sometimes proves to be a pregnancy sign indeed, therefore a late period and negative pregnancy test could disorientate you. If you are in this situation, you can either simply not be pregnant, as we’ve already said in the previous paragraph, or you can be pregnant and your test result can be a false one. This result is sometimes inaccurate, not necessarily because of the test’s accuracy, but sometimes due to some mistakes that can lead to a compromised result.

     Some of the mistakes which could lead to a negative pregnancy test could be:

• you take the test too early, therefore it can’t detect the presence of hCG
  in your body yet
• you don’t read the test result in the “reaction time” (if you are reading it too late, the second line(which should show you are pregnant) could already be evaporated and you will get a false negative result)
• you don’t saturate the test stick with your urine enough
• the cup you are using for your urine is not clean enough, having soap or detergent leftovers which could also lead to a false result

     As you can see, you can have a late period and negative pregnancy test because it is possible that you are not pregnant (so the test is right indeed) or because of some mistakes you can make, but which can be avoided if you are careful and follow exactly the test instructions.