PSA: this is why you shouldn't test early

Photosaur and I must share a brain, because I caved in and tested early too.

There's a reason most people shouldn't test at 10dpo...especially if you decide to test in the evening and then have to hold your pee for 4-5 hours in order to simulate first morning urine.* I swear I nearly piddled all over myself before I could get my pants down when it was finally time to POAS.

Oh, and it was negative. I'm not surprised and I'm actually not terribly disappointed - if you think that taking a test early and seeing a negative is going to crush you, then I absolutely wouldn't recommend you do it, but I knew that if I'm knocked up, the odds of getting a BFP yesterday evening were tiny. I just needed to get the POAS fever out of my system (hey, I'm not temping - I need something to obsess over!), thereby allowing myself to relax until I take the real test on Saturday.

To get all scientific on you for a minute, here's why it's recommended that you wait to test until at least 12dpo:

HPT accuracy DPO (on a standard 25mIU test)
10 dpo : 35%
11 dpo : 51%
12 dpo : 62%
13 dpo : 68%
14 dpo : 74%
15 dpo : 80%
16 dpo : 88%
17 dpo : 92%
18 dpo : 99%

As you can see, most tests are wildly inaccurate at 10dpo - they do come back positive for some people (like Photosaur, yaaay!), but for the most part they will show a negative regardless of whether you're knocked up or not. This is why I'm not disheartened - there is absolutely a chance that I'm pregnant and it's just way too early to tell with a HPT.

But seriously, the difficulty of holding your pee for that long is the real reason you shouldn't test early - forget false negatives, it just freaking hurts by the time you're done holding all of that in! Most of the time I think to myself, "I have to pee on that thing for 10 seconds? That's so long!" This time...well yeah, I had NO PROBLEM meeting the 10 second mark. Aren't you glad I'm here to overshare?

Bring on Saturday and 13dpo!

* For anyone wondering why I'd test in the evening: even though it's generally recommended that you test in the morning, it has nothing to do with actually being the morning - the issue is that you need pee that's been in your body for a long time and absorbed all those hormones without being diluted, and since it's easier not to pee or drink during the night, the first pee of the day is generally the most concentrated. Holding your pee for 4-5 hours and not drinking much will have pretty much the same effect.