QuestionQUESTION: i had concerns and symptoms that i was possibly pregnant. i went 6 or 7 weeks with out a period. i took a pregnancy test it came up negitive. then about 2 weeks later i started bleeding lightly for a few days. then i had an incident the condom broke. thinking i had gotten my period prior i knew i had a chance to prevent the pregnancy. so i took plan B less than 24 hours after the incident. 3 weeks go by and during those three weeks my symptoms of pregnancy that i had been experiencing over the last months got worse. so i took another test and it came up positive. Plan B did not work. why? i went to the hospital to get a hCG blood pregnancy test. the blood test said i was one to 3 weeks pregnant. i decided i wanted to terminate the pregnancy. i went to do so 4 weeks after the hCG blood pregnancy test and the ultrasound said i was 7 weeks and four days. i decided to do the abortion pill. i bled heavy passed decent sized clots and everything for 8 hours and then the bleeding slowed like it was supposed to. i thought i had passed the pregnancy went in for my check up to find out that i hadnt passed everything there was still a lot left but they said that i was no longer pregnant. i finished the abortion by taking a second set of pills. my questions are, is it possible that the ultrasound was incorrect? is it possible that the hCG blood pregnancy test was incorrect? could i have been further along than 7 weeks? could being further along explain the abortion pills not working? if the ultrasound was correct and i was 7 weeks why didnt the abortion pills work the first time?
ANSWER: Hi, jackie,
All I can really do is speculate, but I'll try to offer some thoughts. First, condoms aren't reliable, even when they don't break, so it might be true that you got pregnant at a different time than when you thought. Also, if you weren't fertile when the condom broke, you wouldn't have gotten pregnant then. The information on Plan B says that it won't work once a pregnancy has been established. That is to say, once implantation has taken place, it won't work. People will claim for that reason, it's not an early abortion. I don't agree with that, but the point is, it isn't supposed to work later on. If it DOES work, it doesn't actually prevent pregnancy. Instead, it aborts very early.
You said you were experiencing pregnancy symptoms. You didn't say what the symptoms were. You could have miscalculated the dates. Also, if you were under stress, or if you have a poor diet, you might not have a period for that reason. But by 6 or 7 weeks after the last period, a pregnancy test SHOULD be positive if you are pregnant. Before leaving the issue of poor diet, I will mention briefly that a vegetarian diet will often stop a woman's periods, because a woman has to get some animal fat to make the necessary hormones to cause a period. Also, if you exercise heavily, that can stop your periods.
So if you took Plan B, thinking you had just risked pregnancy, but you actually got pregnant from prior sex, that would explain why Plan B didn't work. All these powerful pills don't guarantee anything anyway.
At 7 weeks and four days, there will be a substantial failure rate for a pill abortion. Once the baby has grown enough of a placenta, the pills won't work. In the United States, according to FDA guidelines, a woman should not attempt a pill abortion past 7 weeks, and even in the final week before then, it isn't always successful.
The pills will cause heavy bleeding, but may or may not pass the baby. But if the bleeding stops that quickly, probably, the woman is still pregnant. Also, taking a second set of pills won't complete an abortion that failed because the pills were taken too late in the first place.
Do you still have symptoms of pregnancy?
A pregnancy test may or may not be accurate at this point, if all of this is recent history. Sometimes, there are pregnancy hormones left over, and they may persist for awhile.
These are powerful medications, and are very dangerous for a woman. You have taken a lot of these, so at this point, your hormones are going to be pretty whacked out. You will have to give your body time to return to some semblance of normal.
A doctor who is OK with abortion, who tries to evaluate you to see if you are still pregnant, cannot always be trusted to demonstrate sound medical judgment, and in my personal experience, diagnosis is often pretty iffy anyway. A doctor who believes in abortion won't mind giving you more pills, because he will make more money.
Please be vigilant for breast cancer. Any abortion, especially of a first pregnancy, will make it much more likely for you. It can strike while you are still young, and the death rate is about 1/4 of all the women who get it. I advise against mammograms, so see if you can find someone who will do a thermogram for you. There is information on the internet about preventative measures you can take. Vitamin D3 is said to be quite good. The recommendation I have seen is that a woman can take about 5000 IU a day, but she needs to be tested periodically to make sure she doesn't have too much Vitamin D in her blood, because that can have consequences. There are also other natural remedies. Also, you are emotionally at risk, and the result could be a violent death in the next year. Discipline yourself to live a responsible life and not to take chances. There is counseling available if you discover you are having emotional repercussions. If you want to explore this, please let me know.
It sounds like you are also taking unnecessary risks that might result in a repeat pregnancy. I recommend you abstain from sex until you are in a position to accept a baby. There is no point in causing that kind of damage to your body, and you really deserve better. Alternative methods of sex can also cause nasty diseases. You deserve a man who will cherish and protect you, and who has made a commitment to you, usually through marriage. You don't owe it to a man to let him have pleasure at your expense, and obviously, a few minutes' pleasure on a regular basis isn't worth the damage you are causing.
At this point, you will really have to see a doctor. Ask him to test your hormones a few times to see what they are doing. It's the only way you will really get answers. If the doctor sees that you still have pregnancy hormones, but they are declining, then you are probably not pregnant any longer. But there is really no way anybody can tell you what is going on with your body over the internet. Even if you had taken only one pill, instead of a bunch of them, it would be difficult for anyone to advise you over the internet.
Please take care of yourself. Let me know how things go.
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QUESTION: is it possible for stress and other factors to affect the results of a pregnancy test? what would cause a false negative? if i got pregnant prior to when i thought is it possible that something in my life style affected the growth of the fetus to the point that the gestational age given to me when an ultrasound was done (7 weeks 4 days) was incorrect?
i went for my check up after the second set of pills and everything was gone my uterus has been said to be clean. i do not have any pregnancy symptoms now.
my symptoms were fatigue, morning sickness which then turned into getting nausus after every meal.
i am getting impalon for my source of birth control from this point on. i have tried so many others. they either complicate things by messing up my cycles or other side effects. i am hopefull i can be successful with this method.
ANSWER: Hi, jackie,
Stress wouldn't affect the results of a pregnancy test. Most of the time, the reason for a false negative is it's too early for the hormones to be high enough for a positive test. If you want to use a couple of different kinds of pregnancy tests, that may be the best safeguard, but usually, a woman shouldn't test until her period is a week late. Some tests are more sensitive, but not all are.
It is possible that something in your lifestyle may have made your baby grow more slowly, but I'm not aware of anything that you could do that could cause your baby to grow faster.
It does sound like you aren't pregnant anymore. It also sounds like that you may have had pregnancy symptoms as well.
I don't recommend birth control. It's also dangerous chemicals and can cause some harm in the long run. Your best bet is to stop having intercourse, especially when you are fertile. If you want to learn how to tell when you are fertile, let me know. But unless you are married, having sex isn't in your best interests anyway. You can get the same high from exercising a moderate amount, by the way. The problem is, if you are having sex, you could also get a sexually transmitted disease, and that's not so easy to deal with, especially some of the more serious ones, like HIV. If your boyfriend has slept with anyone else, you are at risk. Taking birth control will make you more susceptible. So please give this some thought. You DO have an alternative to birth control.
Please take care of yourself, and let me know how things go.
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QUESTION: if something in my lifestyle was or could have been affecting the growth of the baby, could something in my lifestyle have also affected my hormone level resulting in an incorrect hCG blood pregnancy test?
yes i would like to know how to tell when i am fertile! i would also like to thank you very much for your time!
AnswerHi, jackie,
You're very welcome!
You'd have to tell me more about your lifestyle at this point before I think I could comment. Are you using any recreational drugs? Do you work out heavily? What kind of diet do you eat?
There are things that will affect your hormones, so maybe I can get into that.
When a woman is fertile, she produces something that I call "fertile mucus". This mucus is transparent and slippery, and will stretch like a raw egg white. Fertilization of the ovum cannot occur unless this mucus is present, because the mucus conducts the sperm to the ovum. Any other kind of mucus will not do this. A woman can have cloudy mucus that doesn't stretch. Please note that a woman can have fertile mucus during a period, and even during pregnancy (that happened to me). In order to make use of this information, you can't be using any hormones, and you must chart faithfully. Ovulation occurs about 14 days before a woman's next period will start. (Unfortunately, the number of days after a period and before fertilization can vary.) A woman is usually fertile for 2 to 3 days before and after ovulation day. For more information, go here:
http://www.fertilityuk.org/
I hope this helps. Take care!
