Are you worried that you’re urinating too much during a home pregnancy test and that it will affect the results? The short answer is yes, although false negative results are rare, it can affect your human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) levels if you’ve consumed too much water.
HCG is a hormone that your body only produces during pregnancy. When you take a home pregnancy test, it will tell if your body is producing hCG by detecting hCG in your urine. If it is, you will get a positive result.
Urine-based pregnancy tests can’t tell you exactly how much hCG is in your body—just that it’s there. But your body has to produce enough hCG for a pregnancy test to detect it. While home pregnancy tests are very sensitive and can detect relatively small amounts of hCG in your urine, test results can be affected if you test too early and drink a lot of water.
Here’s what you need to know about how your water intake can affect hCG levels in your urine and how it can affect the results of your home test.
How drinking water can affect pregnancy tests
Drinking too much water or other types of fluids can affect the results of a home urine pregnancy test, especially if it is taken early in pregnancy. When your urine is diluted by drinking a lot of fluids, the concentration of hCG in your urine decreases.
If the level of hCG in your urine becomes so diluted that it can no longer be detected by a home urine pregnancy test, the test may indicate that you are not pregnant when in fact you are. This is known as a false negative test result.
Can you urinate too much during a pregnancy test?
The short answer is yes, you can urinate too much for a pregnancy test. Using too much or too little urine can affect the test results. Make sure you follow the instructions to get the most accurate results.
When hCG levels are highest
After pregnancy, your hCG levels increase for several weeks, peaking between the eighth and eleventh week of pregnancy. Then they decline and continue to decline for the rest of your pregnancy.
As a result, a mixed type of “false negative” due to dilute urine is likely to occur early in pregnancy. After this initial stage, even though your urine is diluted due to water consumption, your hCG levels should still be high enough to be detected by a home urine pregnancy test.
Tip
To avoid a false negative result, doctors recommend taking home pregnancy tests first thing in the morning before you start drinking fluids.
What to do after a negative pregnancy test
If you took a home urine pregnancy test too soon after trying to conceive and the result was negative, try waiting a few more days or even a week or two. Home pregnancy tests are most accurate after you miss your expected period . When you repeat the test, take the test as soon as you wake up in the morning to make sure your urine is at its peak concentration.
If you take a urine pregnancy test after missing your period and it’s still negative, wait a few days and try again. If the second test still shows you’re not pregnant but you haven’t gotten your period, contact your healthcare provider.
Another option is to ask your doctor if a blood pregnancy test is appropriate. These blood tests are called quantitative hCG tests because they can accurately measure the amount of hCG in your blood. The amount of water you drink before the test will not affect the results because it will not change the level of hCG in your blood, even in early pregnancy.
