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The minimum term for determining pregnancy. Methods for diagnosing pregnancy: at what time can it be accurately determined

Conceiving a child is such an important and responsible matter that the last days of the next menstrual cycle can turn for a woman into a real test of strength for the psyche: everything that can be done has been done, the result can no longer be affected, but what will it be? It is no wonder that the most important question becomes - at what time can pregnancy be determined, or its absence, and I want to get the answer as accurate as possible and as soon as possible.

Delayed periods, nausea, drowsiness, unusual emotionality - all these symptoms are characteristic of pregnancy, but they can have many other reasons. There are much more informative ways to find out the truth, both "home" and laboratory or outpatient:

  1. keeping a chart of basal body temperature;
  2. rapid test strips for pregnancy;
  3. gynecological examination;
  4. blood test for hCG;
  5. ultrasound diagnostics.

When planning a pregnancy, gynecologists often advise a woman to control her menstrual cycle by measuring basal body temperature. In a fertile woman in the first phase of the cycle, BT is low, at the time of ovulation it drops even lower, then rises sharply and stays at this level until the end of the cycle, and decreases again before the onset of menstruation.

If the period of the next menstruation has come up, and the temperature still does not drop, pregnancy can be suspected.

A knowledgeable person can read a lot about women's health on the BT schedule, but starting the morning with a thermometer is still not an ideal method for determining pregnancy, so it is best used in combination with others.

Express pregnancy test

An express pregnancy test is perhaps the most popular way to find out the truth without leaving your home. The test strips respond to an increase in the level of the hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) in the urine of a woman, which is directly related to conception and early development of the embryo.

How long can pregnancy be determined in this case? The results can be indicative already on the first day of the delay of menstruation, although the second strip at such a short time is often very pale. But it should be remembered that even their manufacturers do not recommend 100% trust in such tests - the result should be confirmed by a laboratory.

Gynecological examination

If the "home" methods allowed you to diagnose yourself with "pregnancy in question", it's time to pay a visit to the doctor to dot the "and". An experienced gynecologist can determine if a woman is expecting a baby by barely looking at the cervix, starting from the second week from conception.

Many doctors, however, consider it undesirable to examine the chair in the early stages - but, in any case, the gynecologist will advise and reassure the patient and write her a referral for the necessary tests.

Blood analysis

The surest, but also the most troublesome method to determine a successful conception is blood donation to determine the level of the same hCG. A clear plus of this method is the ability to detect pregnancy after 7-12 days after the alleged meeting of the egg with the sperm, that is, long before the delay in menstruation. Cons - the very procedure for taking venous blood is rather unpleasant, and the result will have to wait: as a rule, it is ready at least in a day.

Laboratory methods allow you to find out both about the increase in the level of the “hormone of pregnant women” as such, and about what period the resulting figure is typical for.

Ultrasound diagnostics

The method of ultrasound diagnostics can, firstly, confirm the very fact of expecting a child already at the end of the first - the beginning of the second month of the obstetric period - recall, it is counted from the first day of the cycle in which conception occurred. Even if the doctor does not see the actual fetal egg, he will note, at a minimum, the rapid growth of the endometrium in the uterine cavity, which is already preparing to receive the unborn baby.

Secondly, an ultrasound scan performed in the period from 5 to 8 obstetric weeks will help to exclude or timely identify a formidable danger to health, and sometimes the life of a woman - an ectopic pregnancy.

Experts disagree about the effect of ultrasound on the fetus, but they unanimously agree that if the expectant mother is nervous, this is definitely not good for the cause. Therefore, if doubts and fears are very disturbing and provoke serious stress, it is better to conduct this study.

To get the most accurate result, it is recommended to combine several methods listed above. And then the question of how long pregnancy can be detected will disappear by itself, giving way to much more important and pleasant things - such as choosing a name for the unborn baby, arranging a nursery and knitting booties.

It is believed that it is possible to more or less reliably determine the presence of pregnancy only if the first day of the delay in menstruation has already arrived. However, many women want to know as early as possible whether conception has occurred. Someone is waiting for this moment with trepidation, dreaming of a new life and a miracle, someone, on the contrary, is afraid of this, and is mentally preparing for an abortion. Usually this situation occurs if unprotected intercourse has occurred.

In both cases, early diagnosis of pregnancy would be very helpful. The sooner a pregnant woman is registered, the greater the chances of successful gestation. The fact that it is better to have an abortion at the earliest possible date and there is no need to talk at all, everyone already knows this very well. How to determine pregnancy in the early stages and can it be done?

In fact, it can still be done with varying degrees of certainty. However, for this it is necessary to understand what happens in the female body before and after conception, because it is the changes that occur in the body at this moment that can tell whether a pregnancy has occurred.

What happens in the body after conception?

Pregnancy is strictly tied to the woman's menstrual cycle, and conception can occur on strictly defined days: 1-2 days after ovulation. The cycle is not in vain counted from the first day of menstruation. It is from this time that a new egg begins to prepare for release from the ovary. It matures by the middle of the cycle, usually around day 14, unless, of course, your cycle is 28 days. If the cycle is longer or shorter, this must be taken into account, especially if you are using a calendar method of contraception. He is in itself extremely unreliable, but if it is incorrect to calculate the day of ovulation, then its reliability completely disappears.

In parallel with ovulation, a woman’s body prepares for a possible conception: the endometrium softens and thickens, preparing to receive a fetal egg, the follicle that released a mature egg is reborn into a corpus luteum and begins to produce progesterone, which is necessary for successful implantation and maintaining pregnancy, the basal body temperature increases to 37 degrees which are most comfortable for conception. In this state, the body is a little more than a week.

If conception does not occur, then everything returns to normal: the temperature drops, the corpus luteum degrades, the endometrium exfoliates and comes out with menstruation. The cycle starts again. What if fertilization occurs?

The fertilized egg continues to move through the fallopian tube. Already on this path, its division and development begins. A week or a little more later, the introduction of the fetal egg occurs. From this moment, the chorion, one of the fetal membranes, begins to produce the hCG hormone. Gradually, this hormone accumulates in the body.

Medical methods for diagnosing pregnancy

Determination of pregnancy in the early stages is possible only after implantation. Until this moment, the fertilized egg does not come into contact with the parent organism in any way, that is, the organism itself does not yet know about pregnancy.

Accordingly, there are no changes associated with pregnancy.

With one hundred percent probability, pregnancy can only be diagnosed in a medical institution. To do this, you need to donate blood no earlier than 7-10 days after conception. This analysis is based on determining the presence of hCG in the woman's blood.

How to determine pregnancy before a delay at home?

However, is it worth it to run to the doctor every month in the hope of the coveted result?

Answers

For every woman expecting the birth of a baby, it is very important to accurately determine the timing of pregnancy, and as early as possible. This is especially true for those expectant mothers who are expecting their first child or have been trying to get pregnant for a very long time. At what time and by what method is it most reliable to determine early pregnancy?

1. Basal method

The good thing is that you don’t have to go anywhere, buy anything and calculate. It is enough just for 2-3 days in the morning, without getting out of bed, to measure the basal temperature (in the rectum) with a thermometer for 5-6 minutes. If the temperature consistently exceeds 37 degrees, there is a good chance that you are pregnant. However, this method does not determine the timing of pregnancy and often gives errors.

2. Pregnancy test

The most common and generally reliable method. The test reacts to the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin in the urine, which is produced only during pregnancy. The first line on the test appears in any case and confirms that everything is normal with the test itself. If the second one appears, then you are in a position. If the second strip is very pale, this may indicate both a very early pregnancy and an incorrectly performed test.

When is the best time to test? Gynecologists say that it is more reliable to do the test after 1 day of missed menstruation in the morning. But since chorionic gonadotropin begins to be produced by the body already on the 10th day after conception, and conception, as you know, is possible only on the day of ovulation (with a 30-day cycle, ovulation occurs around the 15th day), it is quite possible to determine pregnancy using a test even a few days before the delay of menstruation.

3. Visit to the gynecologist

When examined, even without an ultrasound scan, any more or less experienced doctor will determine pregnancy and its duration to within a week, based on the size of the uterus and the height of its bottom. But this method only works from the 3rd to the 20th week of pregnancy. In the future, in different women, the size of the uterus at different stages of pregnancy can vary significantly.

4. Ultrasound

It is easy to determine pregnancy using ultrasound from the moment the fertilized egg has implanted into the uterine wall. But at the same time, the embryonic gestational age, and not the obstetric one, will be determined. What is the difference? The obstetric term is exactly those dates and numbers that are entered in the pregnancy calendar. By the 1st day of the last menstruation, 40 weeks are added, and thus the terms of pregnancy are determined and the date of birth is determined. The embryonic period is calculated based on the development of the fetus. And since each woman has her own cycle, and future children develop individually, not subject to any deadlines, obstetric and gynecological terms can vary up to 2 weeks.

5. Blood test method

The most reliable way to establish pregnancy is by examining the level of hormones in the blood. However, you will have to wait several days for the result of the tests, and this method does not allow you to determine whether your pregnancy is uterine or ectopic.

Folk ways to determine pregnancy

Our grandmothers did not have any tests or ultrasound, but they wanted to know the terms of pregnancy and childbirth no less than ours. How did they establish future motherhood? By the absence of menstruation, of course, bouts of nausea and vomiting. But the date of birth was calculated by the first movement of the fetus. It is believed that a woman (especially a primipara) feels the first movement of a child in her stomach exactly at the halfway point of pregnancy, that is, at the 20th week. Consequently, another 20 weeks were added to the significant day - and the approximate date of birth was obtained.

And in ancient Egypt, a woman was asked to urinate on two bags of grain: one with barley, the other with wheat. If barley sprouted - there will be a boy, if wheat - a girl, if nothing sprouted - a woman, alas, will not be a mother yet.

The question of what methods can be used to determine pregnancy, how reliable they are, sooner or later can affect almost every woman who is of reproductive age. It should be noted that almost all methods for determining pregnancy that exist today can be divided into probable and certain.

As the name suggests, the first of them, likely signs , help to suspect the possibility of the onset of this event, but require a mandatory recheck to increase the information content (similar signs can occur in other conditions that have nothing to do with pregnancy). The second group - reliable signs , allows even if one of them is found (which one does not matter) to establish the fact of the existence of pregnancy and to determine its term with great accuracy. Probable signs of pregnancy appear much earlier than reliable ones; their detection in the early stages of pregnancy does not require the use of modern diagnostic equipment. Reliable signs for a short period require the use of modern examination methods (ultrasound) or appear at a relatively late stage of fetal development.

This large group of features include:

  • symptoms that can be noticed by the woman herself;
  • symptoms detected by tests (home and performed in a laboratory);
  • folk methods for diagnosing pregnancy - their accuracy in most modern researchers raises huge doubts.

Early signs of pregnancy that a woman can detect herself

A woman can often suspect the likelihood of pregnancy due to the absence of another menstruation - it is at this point in time that most of the fair sex begin to carefully listen to their body. At the same time, a woman may notice a change in her taste preferences, an increase in appetite, the appearance of nausea and vomiting, an increase in the urge to urinate, a slight increase in weight and the appearance of slight swelling of the tissues, darkening of the nipples and pigmentation on the face and midline of the abdomen. Together, all these signs in one patient are extremely rare, but even with a combination of several of them, it is worth turning to the signs of pregnancy, detected using laboratory tests.

This research method is based on progressive changes in the hormonal background of the female body - first, elevated concentrations of hormones are determined in the blood (these tests can only be performed in medical laboratories), and then in the urine. Any of our contemporary women can perform such tests at home - today on the shelves of pharmacies you can find a huge number of test strips for determining pregnancy. The most sensitive of these are inkjet tests, which require little to no prior preparation and can be used at any time of the day, while immersion tests remain the most unreliable and demanding in terms of use. In inkjet tests, their accuracy is attractive, but their widespread adoption is hindered by their rather high cost (regardless of the manufacturer). Immersion strips are affordable for everyone, but they give accurate pregnancy results 3-5 days later than jet strips, and their reliability is significantly lower. All these tests are based on the detection of an increased concentration of chorionic gonadotropin - in the blood, the level of this hormone produced by some cells of the fetus, and then by the placenta, increases from the first days of pregnancy, in the urine - only after reaching a certain concentration of hCG in the blood (after that it begins to be filtered across the glomerular membrane).

And tests for determining pregnancy for the study of the hormonal profile in the blood, and tests for home determination by urine cannot be attributed to reliable methods for diagnosing pregnancy due to the fact that the level of hormones can also change with some diseases of the female reproductive system.

That is why pregnancy diagnostics cannot be based only on these methods - they must be confirmed by one of the reliable methods for detecting pregnancy, for example, by ultrasound. It is possible to obtain both false positive and false negative test results - with tumors that produce hormones, impaired kidney function, and some other diseases of the body. Attention should also be paid to questionable test results - they may indicate violations of the development of the embryo, as well as the existence of an ectopic pregnancy.

This method of home pregnancy determination has not lost its relevance today - it cannot boast of particular reliability, but it does not require the use of any additional devices (with the exception of a mercury thermometer). With this method, a woman should measure every morning, immediately after waking up, the temperature in the rectum (before getting out of bed). The onset of a possible pregnancy is evidenced by a persistent and stable increase in basal temperature above 37 0 C, but this method can be used only after a few days of delayed menstruation.

Folk methods for determining a probable pregnancy

Today, few specialists without skepticism will treat the possibility of using folk methods to diagnose pregnancy - mixing a woman's urine with iodine, wine, soda, watering flowers, evaluating the dreams of a potential mother have gradually become a thing of the past. The possibilities of modern medicine provide more reliable methods for the probable diagnosis of pregnancy, and reliable methods do not require waiting until the second trimester of pregnancy.

When using these methods, even one sign found in a woman of reproductive age indicates the onset of pregnancy. Some of them can be used already from the first weeks after conception (ultrasound examination of the pelvic organs and the fetus), some can still be used only from the second trimester of pregnancy (determining the parts of the fetus in the uterus, listening to its heartbeat, detecting the movement of the fetus by the woman herself) .

Ultrasound procedure can be used from 7-10 days after conception - it is from this moment that the embryo itself (dividing egg) is determined, which is implanted in the wall of the uterus, and from the 20th day of pregnancy, the fetal heartbeat becomes noticeable. Transvaginal ultrasound is more sensitive than a study conducted through the anterior abdominal wall.

Cardiotocography (registration of fetal heartbeats) can be used starting from the 16th week of pregnancy, and auscultation of the heart for a gynecologist is available from the 18th-19th week of pregnancy. From about the same period of pregnancy, the woman herself begins to feel the movements of the child in the uterus - from the 18th week, re-pregnant patients feel this, while during the first week of pregnancy this becomes possible a little later (from the 20th week).

After 13-14 weeks of pregnancy, the doctor can, when examining his patient, determine the change in the height of the fundus of the uterus above the symphysis (pubic joint):

  • for a period of 13-14 weeks, the bottom is located directly at the level of the upper edge of the symphysis;
  • at 16 weeks - in the middle of the distance between the womb and the navel;
  • at 20 weeks - at the level of the navel.
  • in the future, the uterus increases, due to which both the height of its fundus and the circumference of the abdomen change - these methods can be used in the second half of pregnancy (after 20 weeks)

Any reliable method for determining pregnancy helps to determine not only the very fact of its presence, but also to clarify its duration. Almost any of these methods can be used to determine the expected date of birth, and some of them (ultrasound, cardiotocography, listening to the heartbeat) help to monitor the condition of the fetus and the results of the treatment. However, each of them should be used as needed - it can never be argued that one of the methods for diagnosing pregnancy is better and more reliable than the other.