When you can ignore a negative pregnancy test
The BabyCenter Editorial Team If you take a home pregnancy test very soon after you think you may have conceived, a negative result doesn't mean much. When an egg is fertilized after you ovulate, it takes about a week to travel through the fallopian tube to the uterus. And it's only after a fertilized egg implants in the uterus that your body starts producing the pregnancy hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), which is what a home pregnancy test is looking for. A home pregnancy test can only give you a positive result if it detects hCG, says Hope Ricciotti, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and a community editor at BeWell.com. So even if you did conceive, if you test too soon, you'll receive a negative result because the fertilized egg wouldn't have had time to become implanted. If you think you know exactly when conception might have occurred and wait until a week after th