I have done so much research since I first thought I might be pregnant, I feel like I am back in health class in school, lol!
I've read a lot in many forums from women who insist that they kept getting negative hpts and negative blood tests until they were eight, nine, even 12 weeks pregnant. But from the research I am doing, this does not seem humanly possible.
If a blood test, whether qualitative or quantitative, can detect levels of hcg above 5, how can a healthy pregnancy still not show up on a blood test until that far along, especially since a level below 5 is considered not pregnant? I know these levels can vary greatly and that some women have low hCG levels and still deliver healthy beautiful babies, but by low does it mean lower than 5 all the way through the first trimester?! I thought these levels reached their peak by weeks 8 to 11. If it's still undetectable at 5, 6, 7, 8 weeks, etc, that would have to mean it was at 5, then spiked very quickly to its high point and then started going down again?
I'm just confused by how so many women have said that they got multiple negative tests (home tests and blood tests) and were still pregnant. I would think it would be a rare and miraculous thing for a women to have undetectable levels of hCG in her bloodstream and actually be a few months pregnant, but there seem to be a lot of women who report this.
The reason I'm questioning this is because I still haven't gotten a period even though I had a negative blood test and several negative hpts. I know only the EXACT date of unprotected sex, and the blood test was negative 25 days after that. Even if I didn't ovulate until 5 days after that (because sperm can live up to 5 days), the blood test was still 3 weeks after possible conception. Since there's no chance I miscalculated the date of conception, if I had hCG levels that were still undetectable after 3 weeks (not just low, but actually undetectable), I would normally believe I'm not pregnant. But people are telling me that I could still be pregnant because I haven't gotten my period still, and even though I'm still inclined to think I'm not pregnant I am worried that on the off chance I am and my hCG is still undetectable then something could be wrong.