If your pregnancy test strip is showing a faint line, it means you are pregnant. Faint lines could be due to one of the following reasons:
Time: You might be taking the pregnancy test too early. The amount of pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) is less in quantity in your blood immediately after the conception. To lay your doubts to rest, take another pregnancy test after 2-3 days. It will clear the picture.
Sensitivity Level: Different pregnancy test kits have different sensitivity level. Read all the instructions carefully. If your test kits states the pregnancy level of 20MIU (milliInternational Units per Litre) it will show you a faint line when hCG (pregnancy hormone) levels are at 20 MIU in your urine but a sensitivity level of 50MIU will display a negative result. Therefore faint line on your pregnancy test stick means your test is low in sensitivity level. A test with a sensitivity of 20 IU/L (milliInternational Units per Litre) will tell if you’re pregnant sooner than a test with a sensitivity of 50 IU/L.
Chemical Pregnancy: Certain complications in pregnancy cause the faint line on your test stick. Sometimes a fertilized egg travels to uterus and attaches itself to the uterus lining. A placenta develops within six days and starts releasing pregnancy hCG. You immediately conduct a pregnancy test and since it’s too early so you get a faint line on your stripe. You wait for few days and perform the test again. This time you get a negative result. It means you have suffered an early miscarriage. If you have not conducted a pregnancy test you might have been totally unaware of this pregnancy. It’s estimated that about 50% of fertilised eggs don’t make it, and a further 15% of recognised pregnancies end in miscarriage, so this is very common.
Diluted Urine Sample: Pregnancy tests recommend first morning urine for test. If you have taken lots of liquid, urinated frequently and collected urine in the afternoon or evening then pregnancy hormone hCG will be present in the sample in diluted form. This will show a faint line on your stick.