Hook Effect?!!

[Al Syr]

Who knows about this or has tested it?

Today for some stupid reason I took a pregnancy test again. It was lighter than it was last week. I panicked so started googling stuff and I read that after your hcg reaches a certain number (mine 16000 on sunday)it starts to get lighter.

THEN I read that if you dilute your urine that is high hcg the line would be dark again ... so I tried it and took another test with diluted urine and the line in FACT was dark again.

I know I should not be testing anymore but with a previous loss and this terrible cold, and violent cough I have had for a week now I had been worried ... this stupid test just worried me more!

 

[Al Syr]

Test on left is 100% urine

Test on right is 50% urine and 50% water

 

[Al Syr]

and here left is 100% urine and right is 50/50

you can slightly see the control line is a tad darker on the one on the right

AND NOW! I BOW TO STOP TESTING!

 

[winterbabies3]

Weird! Never heard of it!

 

[BabyJayne]

Looks like it for sure. It happened to me to in this pregnancy if you want to check out my thread https://babyandbump.momtastic.com/pregnancy-tests/2271545-hook-effect-updated-more-test-pics.html

All going well so far, and only the one baby...I was worried high hcg would mean twins!

 

[Al Syr]

Looks like it for sure. It happened to me to in this pregnancy if you want to check out my thread https://babyandbump.momtastic.com/pregnancy-tests/2271545-hook-effect-updated-more-test-pics.html

All going well so far, and only the one baby...I was worried high hcg would mean twins!

Omgosh! Thank you for sharing. All I am doing is freaking myself out! All I can do now is wait till Wednesday aug 5th for my scan

 

[bohemiangel]

This happened to me, too. Silly enough I was testing to try and reassure myself because I loved seeing those dark lines every day, but then suddenly around 5+3 the line got lighter and kind of blotchy. I did the exact same thing- panicked, Googled, discovered the Hook effect, retested with diluted urine, and then came up with two dark lines again. No more home testing for me!

PS. In my Googling and searching other threads about this, I've come to learn that the actual "Hook effect" is quite rare, whereas the "Variant Hook Effect" is much more common. Basically it just has to do with the test not working right when there's too much Hcg. Congratulations, and now stay away from those tests!!