Waiting to get pregnant? Missed a period and want to know if you are pregnant yet? How soon can you check if you have conceived after unprotected sex? Read on for all the trivia that you may need.

Right Time to Take Pregnancy Test After Sex

Most women take a home pregnancy test after they miss a period. This implies that by the time they confirm it, they have completed four to five weeks of pregnancy. However, if you have had unprotected sex and missed to take an emergency pill on time, you can take a home pregnancy test sooner to check your pregnancy.

There are certain things that should be known if you had unprotected sex. Primarily, all pregnancy tests measure the amount of human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), the man pregnancy hormone, in the body. This hormone is secreted once the fertilized egg is implanted into the uterus wall. If, in any case, you had unprotected sex during ovulation, i.e. when the most mature egg is ready to be fertilized is released from the ovary, the chances of getting pregnant increase dramatically.

The sperm stays in the woman’s body for about 72 hours or at least three to five days. Therefore, if you had unprotected sex a day or two before ovulation or after it, you might be at a risk of unwanted pregnancy. After being released from the ovary, the egg is passed into the fallopian tube and needs to be fertilized within 24 hours.

Taking a pregnancy test too early when hCG levels are low in the urine, you might end up getting a false negative, which implies that you are not pregnant, although you might have actually conceived. Therefore, to know your pregnancy status, wait at least for two weeks after intercourse to allow hCG levels to build up. If you get a negative result, try taking the test again after three to five days if you still have doubts. It is, therefore, better to take the test at a time when your period is approaching, i.e. two weeks post ovulation when chances of getting an accurate result are high.

How soon after Unprotected Sex can you take a Pregnancy Test?

If you experience irregular period or unsure when you ovulated, you can take a urine home pregnancy test 14 days after you had unprotected test last time. However, for more accurate result, it is advised to conduct the test 21 days after intercourse.

If you want to test earlier than a urine test, you can visit the doctor for a blood pregnancy test to help you determine if you are positive within three to four days after implantation or about 6-8 days after ovulation and fertilization.

Is Home Pregnancy Test Reliable?

The accuracy of home pregnancy tests is completely reliable and accurate to 95-99%. Having sex before taking a pregnancy test, using alcohol or drugs, and taking antibiotics, including fertility enhancers or birth control pills, should not affect a home pregnancy test.

Adding further, neither yeast infections nor urinary tract infections can lead to false positives on home pregnancy tests. Even soap or douches and water vaginal washes do not prevent pregnancy. In fact, they never cause inaccurate test results for a home pregnancy test.

How common is it to get inaccurate results on a home pregnancy test?

Getting a false negative on a home pregnancy test is very rare. Usually, false negatives occur due to testing too early, not following the directions of testing correctly, or reading the results long after the reaction time, i.e. when an evaporation line has appeared. Some other causes for a false negative can be the presence of chemical pregnancy (when the egg is fertilized but doesn’t attach to the uterine lining), use of an expired test kit.

Generally, chemical pregnancies can occur when the body makes the same amount of HCG as if the fertilized egg was actually implanted. And even if implantation still doesn’t occur, you are not pregnant actually. This could make you think that the test was false, but it was not a true pregnancy.

Having said these, all these things could show a false negative on the pregnancy test. However, if you still feel that you are pregnant even after a negative result, you can wait a few days and take the test again to get accurate results.

With this modern age of scientific development, it seems that you don’t really have to keep wondering very long to find if you are pregnant.