I was at my Mum's over Easter and I found a little old book amongst her book collection called "Complete Guide for the Mother-To-Be". It was first published in 1960 and it was amazing to read about how things were done in the past. This will be a little long, but I thought I would share a couple of examples...

From the chapter: "Your Visit to the Doctor"..."The first sign that you are pregnant will undoubtedly be the absence of your period. At the same time, it should be stressed that there is no need to believe you are pregnant every time you do not menstruate on exactly the day expected. You must be several weeks late before you have firm reason to think you are expecting a child. Your doctor will also be unable to tell you, for sure, until your period is six or seven weeks late, or in other words, before two successive menstrual periods have failed to appear".

Two missed periods! To think, I discovered I was pregnant with my son at 10DPO!

And...

"Laboratory tests for pregnancy" (I found this fascinating)..."The laboratory may test your urine...the urine test is undertaken to determine the presence of the pituitary hormone. Your pituitary secretes this hormone in large quantities from the onset of pregnancy and it passes into your urine. Your urine is injected into a rabbit, mouse or other small animal in order to provoke in it the characteristic changes resulting from the pregnancy hormone. Animal lovers may rest assured that the creature used will not suffer at all.

If your urine is injected into the test animal and the expected changes are not apparent, there is little chance of you being pregnant. In doubtful cases the process will be repeated after a week or two; a second negative test will completely eliminate the possibility of a pregnancy. If the test is positive, pregnancy is certain.

Tests already developed and put into use allow doctors to use specially treated papers which, when dipped into the urine samples, change color to test for loss of sugar or loss of protein by the body. Tests are already underway on a similar paper which can be used by the doctor in the consulting room to determine whether or not a woman is pregnant. In this way the doctor could tell immediately without the need for time-consuming laboratory tests. The days of the rabbit test may well be numbered."

All I can say is thank God we live in the age of HPT's!! Those poor little rabbits!