A Private Little Revolution

Megan Beal

ENG 2001 – 101
Vicki LeQuire
26 July 2012 How does a woman know she’s pregnant? This answer once demanded a combination of guesswork, intuition and time1. When a woman thinks there is a possibility of pregnancy, she wants to know as early as possible2. It’s been this way since prehistory. Waiting became a thing of the past in 1978. Introduced as “a private little revolution,” the first home pregnancy tests appeared on the shelves of drug stores3. One of the most universal home healthcare products in America, the home pregnancy test identifies the presence of human chronic gonadotropin (hCG), the pregnancy hormone, in urine. It took a while for scientists in the modern world to figure out what hormones were, what hormones were produced during pregnancy and ways to detect when they increased in concentration in early pregnancy3. Scientists in the Reproductive Research Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at NIH did research that led to a sensitive, accurate test for the hCG4. Human Chronic Gonadotropin (hCG) was an enthralling hormone to study because not much was known about its behavior or makeup. Scientists were aware that the human body secretes hCG during pregnancy or certain kinds of cancers, only5. When NIH scientists did research on measuring and identifying hCG, they were unsure of what specific role hCG was in normal pregnancy, what normal levels of hCG should be, or how they would rise and fall during the course of pregnancy6. Since then much research has been done to answer these questions. Most expecting mothers’ want that confirmation, that feeling of safeness. e.p.t. does just that. As shown on YouTube, video #1370 is a television advertisement for e.p.t. aired in the US during 20027.
[pic]
http://cdn3.blogs.babble.com/being-pregnant/files/2010/06/EPT-Keepsake-Case-2_1.jpg8
With 99% accuracy, no other valuable test can pinpoint the condition as accurately as this test can. This test is one of the most popular tests in the US. It is far more sensitive than any other tools; it traces the hCG hormone to identify pregnancy or lack there of. The level of hCG is the highest in the mornings, making that the ideal time to take an e.p.t. test. Determining pregnancy in the early stages is safe for both mother and child. The sooner the outcome, the sooner prenatal care can be handled. This pregnancy is a revolution. It allows women to privately and confidently find out if they are pregnant, without waiting for a doctor’s appointment. Results are easily readable and appear in two minutes. Making sure directions are followed will result in the most accurate results9. Early pregnancy tests have come a long way from where they used to be. One of the earliest records of a urine-based pregnancy test can be found in an Egyptian