A 33-year-old Texan stands in a bathroom, filming. In front of her on the countertop is a plastic mug containing fresh breast milk donated by a friend, and a pregnancy test stick. She dips the test in the milk and carefully lays it on kitchen towel to dry. The experiment’s aim is to see if breast milk can easily make a false positive pregnancy test result (it doesn’t).
Her name is Ashley Morrison, and she is a self-admitted pregnancy test addict. Her website, Peeonastickfreak.com, which is constantly updated along with the most up to date short article and recommendations on house pregnancy examinations or HPTs, gets up to a million hits per month from visitors in the United States alone. In the last couple of years, Morrison has actually done much more compared to 50 ‘experiments’ along with pregnancy peesticks, which she posts online. In the most popular, along with nearly 78,000 views, she pregnancy tested along with two samples of very first morning urine, to one of which she added sugar, in an attempt to find if it’s true that sugary urine can easily make a false positive result (it doesn’t).
Morrison is a veterinary nurse-turned computer techie, and she knows as much, otherwise more, regarding pregnancy examinations as the brands that make them. She built her encyclopedic knowledge over 15 years of infertility, prior to she fell pregnant along with her son and daughter, now 5 and six. The decision to launch Peeonastickfreak.com and its associated YouTube channel and thriving Facebook community, two years ago, was triggered after suffering a miscarriage. The truth that she is no longer actively TTC (attempting to conceive) does not stop her from playing along with pregnancy tests. She has, she explains, “a passion to recommendations women that might be going through infertility… I attempt and recommendations women grab pregnant. It’s my job, to research, and test out various [HPT] brands and ultimately provide my review.”
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Morrison is merely one of a vast number of pee-on-a-stick, or POAS, addicts about the globe that spend a fortune on HPTs. POAS addicts routinely take ten or 20 HPTs over the road of a few days, and share photos of their test sticks on sites love Fertilityfriend.com and Babycenter.com for detailed discussion. Lots of broadcast their ‘live’ pregnancy testing on YouTube, and visit testing sites and Facebook groups love Peestickparadise.com and All regarding Pregnancy Tests, which are hives of activity.
The friendship networks that make among strangers that POAS can easily be sanity-saving. Saran McGrath, a member of Morrison’s Facebook circle, has actually found support through two pregnancies and one loss, and calls the group her ‘safe haven’.
Often women ‘tweak’ apparently negative examinations using Photoshop to prove to ghostly second lines the naked eye may not see. Tweaking apps love Early HPT+. have actually sprung up in response to demand. Then there are ‘pee parties’, where a group of women test at the same time and share results online. There is no end to which POAS addicts will certainly not go in the quest to see that elusive, life-changing second line. This year, it’s not enough to article a photo of a test—you place your wedding ring next to it, apparently to recommendations the camera concentrate on the test strip much more clearly.
I’ve been there. As quickly as TTC my youngsters (now 5 and two), I went fairly far down the route of POAS obsession. Buying the examinations became a sort of fetish in itself. I would certainly gaze at very first Responses in the supermarket, getting a rush merely preparation As quickly as I would certainly let myself buy a fresh pack. I limited myself to about ten of these expensive examinations each cycle, yet online I bought ‘internet cheapies’ by the 50, and I’d impulsively include random various other brands I saw in chemists merely for an added thrill. Sometimes I even took ovulation examinations As quickly as my period was due, in case they somehow told me I was pregnant, and likewise merely due to the fact that I craved to POAS.
I was rigid regarding POAS scientifically, torturing my physique to hold off from weeing for as Lots of hours as feasible so my pee would certainly be ultra-concentrated, and timing seconds As quickly as I dipped the stick using my phone’s stopwatch. My heart beat from my chest as I watched the moisture spread across the testing window. Then, As quickly as only one cruel line appeared, I stood in the garden or under the harshest lights I could locate along with the tests, searching for a ‘squinter’ of a line (though As quickly as I believed I could see one, it was merely an ‘evap’ or an ‘indent’). In desperation, sometimes I took the examinations apart, although you’re not supposed to—wondering if I may locate a line that way. Obviously, As quickly as I got a negative, I merely tested again, and again, and again, even As quickly as I knew it was virtually impossible.
My knowledge of antibody strips was immense at that time and I spent Lots of hours daily on fertility forums. There is something extraordinary in the tip that having a baby can easily be reasonable to a single line (or digital word: ‘pregnant’)—and As quickly as Every one of your hopes come to rest on seeing that line or word, it’s hard not to become fixated.
Like any sort of addiction, POAS is incredibly exciting to feed, yet it likewise has actually a dark side. For women suffering infertility or repeated miscarriages, POAS can easily be a seriously anxious experience. Sonia, a 31-year-old stay-at-home-mother from Oxfordshire, that is currently pregnant along with her seventh child, has actually had nine miscarriages. She started making YouTube videos last year, documenting every step of her TTC journey, along with Lots of live vlogs of taking HPTs, including once placing 13 different brands to the test. Now in to her second trimester, she says: “I don’t buy examinations any sort of more, yet I am enjoying using up the ones I have, merely due to the fact that I can. portion of me cannot believe examinations are now positive and the various other portion of me has actually to maintain testing in case the lines grab weaker and I miscarry again.”
In a recent vlog, Sonia tested As quickly as she was nine weeks pregnant to demonstrate the ‘hook effect’ in which the second line gets fainter as the pregnancy hormone exceeds the test’s upper limit. “Lots of individuals test for the same reasons as me,” says Sonia, “they’re scared of yet another loss, and seeing a test go fainter, they might panic. I aim to spread awareness and put people’s minds at ease.”
Modern pregnancy examinations are so sensitive that we now have actually straightforward access to short article previous generations of women never ever had. I had the now common experience of being painfully aware of an early miscarriage or ‘chemical pregnancy’ which happens about the time a period is due. Free of the HPTs that enable a positive result almost a week prior to your period, the loss of such a pregnancy would certainly merely appear to be a period. Of course, the answer is not to test until you’re late, yet if the technology is on offer, it’s hard not to use it.
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Morrison shares yet another concern regarding highly sensitive tests. “These examinations Regularly trigger women TTC much distress nowadays as they develop highly visible antibody strips that can easily be misconstrued as a true positive result. Blue dye examinations are really notorious for dye runs and false positive results. A line is not just a line anymore.”
Ultimately, pregnancy testing Every one of comes down to finally getting your BFP [big fat positive]. There’s nothing else in life love that moment, and portion of the intrigue of the modern internet fertility community is being able to experience this thrill vicariously, watching others’ BFPs online (check out this one, after years of infertility, and this, where the partner underreacts spectacularly). A substantial minority, of course, never ever grab that second line.
I’m not preparation any sort of much more children, yet I locate myself missing the suspense of pregnancy testing. I locate myself longingly gazing at the very first Responses in the supermarket again, this time sadly, due to the fact that I already know I’ll never ever take another.
