Will Birth Control Affect My Pregnancy Test Results?

If you need to take a pregnancy test while on birth control, you are not alone. Millions of women do this yearly and their results vary. There are a number of reasons you might suspect pregnancy while using birth control, but there is no reason to think that taking a pregnancy test while on the pill is anything less than completely effective.

Can Birth Control Affect My Pregnancy Test?

If you need to take a test while on birth control, you will not receive inaccurate results because of your birth control. Yes, it's true that you can receive inaccurate results when taking a pregnancy test, but none of those results will be inaccurate due to the fact that you are on any sort of birth control.

Birth control is used to prevent pregnancy. In general, it's used to prevent a woman from ovulating, therefore making it impossible for a sperm to fertilize an egg since there is no egg present. While birth control is 99 percent effective in most cases, human error often makes it ineffective. If you find yourself needing to take a test while on birth control of any sort, go ahead and take it.

Pregnancy tests are designed to detect a pregnancy hormone in your urine. This appears in your urine once you become pregnant. This means you will have already experienced conception, when the egg meets the sperm and becomes fertilized. You will also already experience the journey on which your fertilized eggs travels the length of your fallopian tubes and implants itself in the wall of your uterus. Your body will not begin to produce the pregnancy hormone hCG until your egg is in the uterine wall. From that point on, it takes a week or more for your hCG levels to become high enough to detect on a pregnancy test.

Taking birth control is supposed to prevent the release of eggs. However, once that fails, there is nothing your birth control can do. It cannot harm the fertilized egg and fetus of your unborn child because that's not what it is designed to do. For this reason, it will not make any difference whether or not you need to take a pregnancy test while on birth control; the result will be as accurate as possible.

Of course, there are factors that affect your test result. By reading the test incorrectly, not using it correctly, using an expired test, or taking the test before your body has produced high enough levels of hCG will affect your test's outcome.

Can You Take a Pregnancy Test While On Birth Control?

You can absolutely take a test while on birth control. The chemicals in your birth control will not affect your results. There is no prescription medication that will affect the outcome of your test except for fertility drugs that contain hCG. Since you are on the pill, it is probably safe to assume that you are not also taking fertility drugs as you are obviously not trying to become pregnant.

The way in which you use a test while on the pill is simple; you do the same thing you would if you weren't on birth control and you were trying to become pregnant. It's important that you read the instructions carefully. Use the first urine of the morning and adhere to all the instructions provided in the box. Do not assume you know what to do simply because you might have taken a pregnancy test in the past. All pregnancy tests have their own unique set of instructions and not using them correctly is going to cause issues when reading the results of your home test.

It's important to remember that you cannot detect pregnancy early unless you are using a sensitive pregnancy test. For example, if your test does not specifically mention it can detect pregnancy earlier than the first day of your missed period, do not use it if you want to test earlier than that. Use a more sensitive test.

Additionally, it's also important to remember that a negative result a few days before your missed period does not indicate you are not pregnant. In fact, it might just mean you don't have high enough levels of hCG to detect. Wait 48 hours and try again. However, if you still receive a negative result on the day you expect your period to arrive, chances are good that you are not pregnant because tests are now 99 percent effective, even if you are taking the pill.

Taking The Test While On Birth Control

If you take a test while on the pill, you will receive the same results as you would if you were not. The chemicals designed to prevent pregnancy are not designed to affect the results of a pregnancy test or even to harm your fetus if you are to become pregnant while on the pill, shot, or other form of control.

If you do not want to become pregnant, be sure to use it correctly every single day. The biggest cause of pregnancy for women on the pill is human error. It's easy to forget to take a pill one day and assume that you'll make it up the next day. You won't. The damage may already be done. Additionally, there are several medications that affect the effectiveness of your birth control, which means you might need secondary means if you are taking prescription drugs.