Today, knowing if you are pregnant is usually straightforward – you pee on a stick and then wait for the lines to appear. Tests for women to use themselves at home were first marketed in the 1960s. They work by detecting the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in urine – which is produced primarily by cells in the placenta during pregnancy.
Blood tests can tell you the answer a mere 11 days after conception and urine tests a few days later. Of course, a positive pregnancy test doesn’t necessarily lead to a baby – one in five will end in miscarriage. Yet that positive test is often seen as the start of a journey into parenthood.
But things were very different in the past. The obvious signs of missing periods or food cravings could mean pregnancy. But until the pregnancy was much more advanced there was no way of knowing that they weren’t due to illness or menopause.
