Some women can feel changes occurring in their bodies before a period is even missed. Some women are so irregular that they don’t even know when the period should be missed. Many report significant changes in early pregnancy, some which might even be alarming if the woman wasn’t pregnant.
Doctors always want to know if there is any chance a female patient is pregnant. It’s not a time to get offended if a doctor is very inquisitive about this issue. You might know you aren’t pregnant; you might know your teenage daughter isn’t pregnant. But we’ve all heard stories of women and girls who didn’t know they were pregnant. (My stepmother even had a co-worker who was told she was infertile and whose own doctor said she wasn’t pregnant, and found out she was having a baby when she was in the hospital having the baby.) A doctor who doesn’t know you really well is going to prefer a test. There are good reasons for this.
The first significant reason is to be able to differentiate between appendicitis and an ectopic pregnancy, both of which can be life-threatening conditions. Appendicitis in the early stages and without any advanced medical care may be treated with antibiotics. An ectopic pregnancy needs an entirely different approach. One might wish to differentiate between early menopause and pregnancy. In a young woman with nausea and vomiting without a fever, pregnancy is going to be one of the first guesses. A cheap pregnancy test can save a lot of time and resources.
A second equally important reason to know whether a woman is in the early stages of pregnancy is to determine whether medications are safe to administer. Before any medication is prescribed to a woman of child-bearing age, the doctor always asks (at least, they always did with me) whether there is any chance she could be pregnant. Many medications, especially antibiotics, are contraindicated in pregnant patients. Even most OTC pain relievers carry a risk of affecting the fetus.
While pregnancy tests are not added to the medical supplies for satisfying curiosity (which is why most people take pregnancy tests early on), knowing as soon as possible can help a person make wiser choices in diet, know when to start taking a possibly limited supply of prenatal vitamins, and know when to be more cautious with risky foods like raw eggs (cookie dough or cake batter--salmonella risk) or homemade cheese (listeria risk).
Individual pregnancy tests still run around $5-8 each at grocery stores, which makes stocking up a little prohibitive for most people. However, as I happily discovered a while back, you can buy 20-25 of them for the same price on Amazon. That’s a much better deal for the home medical kit. I was shocked myself at how inexpensive they are and just added a box to my Amazon cart. And at that price, you can even afford to use a few just to satisfy curiosity
Most pregnancy tests have a shelf life of 2-3 years past the date of manufacture. Of course, like with many supplies, the storage temperature is important. Temperatures that are too hot or too cold will shorten the shelf life and possibly affect accuracy.
If tests are expired, most often they will yield a false negative result—not pregnant when in fact the woman is. However, test results will likely still be accurate if the woman is a few weeks past the missed period.
In initial days and weeks of collapse, some women may forget their birth control pills. They may run out. Others, especially younger women and teenage girls, may throw caution to the wind. We see this often happened throughout history in uncertain times. A rapidly changing diet and stress will also come into play. Life in uncertain times will already be challenging enough. Dealing with disease and illnesses will make challenges that much more difficult. Knowing whether a patient is pregnant will help a doctor provide the best possible care, regardless of what is going on in the world.
Links to related posts:
Appendicitis--Prepping for the Possibility in a Post-Collapse World
Dealing with Ectopic Pregnancy in a Bad Situation
1.26.21
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