Is this a Positive, a Negative, or Something Else?

After passing an uncomfortable night, unable to find a good position, and trying to not go to the bathroom for the longest time possible, I finally had to take a pregnancy test. They say the first urine of the day, more concentrated in theory, is better. Pregnancy tests test for the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in a woman's urine that would tend to indicate the presence of growing embryo (except for false positives caused by defective tests, use of certain drugs, etc.).

My husband wanted to accompany me, so we both waited for the test results in our cramped bathroom at about 5:50 a.m.. This Clearblue test said "plus" on the outside of the foil package. The "plus" version either shows a minus sign or a plus sign in the bigger window (unlike the digital which have a digital screen that says "pregnant" or "not pregnant" plus the estimated number of weeks pregnant if the woman is pregnant).

Unfortunately, our mind was left anything but "clear" after I took the Clearblue pregnancy test. Our test showed a horizontal line that was clear and then a very, very, very faint vertical line, making it look like a reluctant plus sign. Or perhaps this was just our wishful thinking.  We waited until the full 10 minutes in the instructions had passed and the result still looked the same. The instructions said that one of the lines could be faint, but after so many years of trying to conceive and having reconciled ourselves to attempting IVF and knowing that we had not even undergone IVF yet, we were scared to believe that it could be a plus sign. Or if it was a plus sign, what if the test was defective?

I emailed a picture of this confusing test result to my nurse coordinator at the Victoria Fertility Centre. After a couple of exchanges, she concluded that she was not sure if it was a plus or a minus either and that I should take a second test (so much for "clear your mind with Clearblue").  I asked her when I should take the second test. She thought about 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. that night. She told me to not drink anything all day long in order to concentrate my urine as much as possible.

I was not happy with this directive. Normally by the evening I would have had litres of water and a couple of cups of tea. I'm naturally thirsty and my medications only increase my thirst. I spent the day on the couch, watching T.V. shows on the internet, writing, taking small sips of water every few hours, and generally "holding it in" until I absolutely couldn't anymore.

Bill, tense at work, reexamined the photos and ran them through a different filter and looked at the negative of the photo.

Neither of us knew what the next result would be. . . .

The "plus" test in its package.

Before taking the test.

Is this a positive? Is this a negative? Something else?

We looked at this test result in many different lights.

Then Bill, tense at work, took the blue out of one of the photos and sharpened it to see if it looked more like a plus.

Then he looked at the "negative: of the photo to see if it looked more like a negative or a positive.