I recently read this really terrific blog post about if and when to POAS (pee on a stick – or take a home pregnancy test) after an IVF treatment. The author, Lisa Rouff, Ph.D., is a psychologist specializing in infertility and adoption. You can read the full post here.
Dr. Rouff offers some great insight about deciding IF you should consider POAS, and if so, when to start trying – based on your own expectations and tolerance. In other words, she tells you how to be “smart” about POAS based on your own personality.
One consideration that she doesn’t cover, is that sometimes home pregnancy tests can give you a sense of whether the embryo is implanting or not. If your clinic tells you to test at day 12 – 14 post transfer, you may have a negative test – but not know that the embryo had implanted but your hCG has already fallen to the “not pregnant” level. The one benefit of POAS rather early (say around 6 – 8 days post transfer for a donor IVF cycle, or 10 – 12 days post trigger shot for an own egg IVF cycle) is that if the embryo implanted and hCG started rising, you will likely get a positive test result early – even though it may turn into a negative if the pregnancy is not viable.
While that seems like it would get hopes up unnecessarily (which is why some clinics prefer to test around day 14 post transfer), I have seen patients with more than one failed IVF use this information to help determine whether there is simply a failure of the embryo to implant, or whether it may be immune or embryo quality issues that are happening after implantation.
I don’t necessarily recommend this option for everyone, but it is something to consider as an additional information tool in figuring out the infertility puzzle.
PS- In my experience, the most sensitive test on the market right now is the Target brand (called “UP” I think) two line test. Stay away from the digital tests – they generally are not as sensitive as the two line tests, which seem to be even more sensitive than the + or – tests.
I am no longer ttc but wanted to chime in to say that the ClearBlue Easy Digital pregnancy test has been known to be sensitive to 12.5 mIUs. It is much pricier than others so not the best “go to” option for the frequent POASer.
i would say to stay away from blue dye tests since they often give false positive results…you can sort of see a line even if its not a positive line.
I just thought I would chime in here. I went through 6 total cycles before finally having our little boy. Along the way we suffered from 3 miscarriages. Knowing that we were pregnant did not really help us along the way, it really only made it a lot harder mentally. I would encourage people to wait until there doctor tells them to test. But I am not a doctor, just speaking from personal experience. If you would like to hear our story please visit http://www.ivfsuccessstories.info.
I’ve always waited, but my next cycle I think I’m going to POAS early. I felt implantation this last cycle, and BFN. For me at this point the knowledge would be useful. At an earlier time it might have been less so.