PREGNANCY
What Is the Hook Effect?
A PSA for the anxiously pregnant (especially after loss)
I got pregnant with my third child three months after the devastating loss of my second child. To say I was nervous was an understatement. At that time, I didn’t know about the hook effect.
By about 5 or 6 weeks gestation I was certain I was losing another pregnancy. I wasn’t just worried that I might. It was — to me — as clear as day that it was happening. Here’s why:
Amazon sold super cheap pregnancy tests. I think they cost me about $0.25 apiece, and I had stocked up for my trying to conceive journey. My first child had taken a while to conceive. We had been lucky the second time, but I didn’t know how long it might take.
When I got a faintly positive test after the first month of trying, I almost didn’t believe it. It was too lucky to have conceived two babies in a row the first month trying. So I tested the next day. It was slightly darker, but I still wasn’t convinced.
By the third day of testing, it was an obvious positive, though still astronomically fainter than the control line. I developed a daily ritual of peeing on a stick to watch the line get darker. And it did.
