Question:
"I'm a 37-year-old mother of eight kids. per week before my amount was due, I used one in all those pregnancy tests you'll do four days before your missed amount (I'm not a really patient person), and it came out positive. I did 3 additional tests over future 3 days, and every one were positive. Why did my tests commence positive therefore early? I heard hCG levels are higher with twins — may I be pregnant with over one baby?"
First of all, congratulations on your supermom standing — that is quite a brood you have got! (It's wonderful you've got time to even take a pregnancy take a look at, including take the steps necessary to urge pregnant within the 1st place.) It's actually understandable why you were anxious to require a home pregnancy take a look at as early as you probably did, particularly if you think you are carrying multiples.
Those early positives might be one clue that you're having twins, but don't count on it.
Here's why: Home pregnancy tests look for the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in your urine, and levels of that hormone are indeed higher in multiple pregnancies — but not right away. It takes a few days to outpace the hCG production of a singleton (one baby) pregnancy. On the first day of your first missed period, there might be no difference at all. Since you tested yourself even earlier than that, it's just as likely that what you measured is simply a normal variation in hormone production; your early positives may mean you have two more babies on the way (certainly more common among older mothers anyway), or they may mean that you have just one. The only thing for sure right now is that you're pregnant.
Why such an iffy answer? It's because home pregnancy tests must account for several big variables. First, hCG starts getting manufactured by the cells of the placenta a few days after the embryo implants itself in your uterine wall, and then doubles every two to three days for about tenweeks — but implantation can take place at virtually any time after ovulation. Your egg might get fertilized immediately after being released and then speed its way to your uterus, or it might be fertilized as much as five days after you ovulate and take a leisurely journey to its eventual home. Since hCG doesn't get produced until implantation, you may have no measurable levels of it until just before you miss your period — or you may have almost two weeks worth of it already. In addition to this variation (or perhaps because of it), the amount of hCG can differ wildly from person to person and pregnancy to pregnancy. Researchers have found concentrations ranging from 0 to 500 mIU/L on the first day of a missed period – and that's in women carrying a single fetus.
Finally, pregnancy tests themselves vary in sensitivity, not just from brand to brand but from batch to batch. Very few home tests are sensitive enough to use reliably before the first day your period is due; not until then do most women have hCG levels high enough to produce a plus sign (some experts recommend waiting a few extra days, to be sure there's enough hormone to measure, though any positive result is accurate no matter what day you use the test on). But if your levels were on the high side and you happen to have used especially sensitive home pregnancy tests, you certainly could have gotten early positives and not be having twins.
By the way, blood tests for hCG are more accurate than home pregnancy tests (especially earlier on), since they measure the actual amount of the hormone you're producing and not just what shows up in your urine. In blood tests, hCG levels are significantly higher (30 to 50 percent) in twins and multiples, but even so it takes a few days for the difference to appear. And few practitioners order blood tests for pregnancy anyway, since home pregnancy tests are so accurate once a period is missed. Yours might, since you did have such early positives; he or she might also order an ultrasound, which will let you see if you've got one baby on board or more copious cargo.
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