Using an hCG Levels Chart to Track Your Pregnancy

While you don't need to track hCG throughout your nine-month gestation, an hCG levels chart can inform doctors about the health of your pregnancy each week.

Human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, is a hormone produced during pregnancy in the cells of the placenta. The presence of hCG triggers at-home pregnancy tests to turn positive.

The amount of hCG present in the parent's body rises rapidly during early pregnancy. While it's not a standard practice, charting hCG levels can help determine whether the pregnancy is progressing normally, is at risk for a miscarriage, or is showing signs of other complications.

Below, we take a more in-depth look at hCG levels, how they're measured, and what they can mean throughout your pregnancy. We also provide a handy hCG levels chart for parents-to-be.

Pregnant woman at doctor

Julie Bang

What Is hCG?

As soon as you become pregnant, your body begins producing human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which can be found in the blood several days after conception. This hormone is detected in early embryos and eventually becomes part of the developing placenta. It also stimulates the corpus luteum to produce progesterone, which is essential for a developing fetus.

When a physician wants to confirm a pregnancy, they may order one or more quantitative hCG blood tests. These tests identify the amount of hCG in the pregnant person's blood, expressed as an amount by milli-international units of hCG hormone per milliliter of blood (mIU/ml).

Normal hCG Levels During Pregnancy

Typically, the placenta starts releasing hCG about 6-12 days after ovulation. The levels usually double every 29-53 hours, says Brennan Lang, MD, FACOG, an OB-GYN at Texas Children's Pavilion for Women.

This doubling trend continues until 8-10 weeks after implantation when hCG levels peak at around 90,000-100,000 mIU/mL. Then hCG starts plateauing because the placenta takes over estrogen and progesterone production.

But here's the tricky part: Healthy hCG levels don't always double every two days. "The level of hCG detectable in blood tests increases rapidly in early pregnancy at a rate of about 35% to 200% or more every two days, which is a wide range of normal," says Dr. Balwin. That's why doctors don't pay much attention to specific hCG numbers; instead, they focus on hCG trends.

Any single hCG test doesn't say much about the health of the pregnancy. Individual people have a wide variation in hCG levels, and the same person may experience a big difference in hCG numbers from one pregnancy to the next. The hCG doubling time, over two separate blood tests taken days apart, usually provides more useful information than a single hCG level.

How to Calculate Your hCG Levels

While home pregnancy tests alert you to the presence of hCG, they don't calculate exact levels of the hormone. For that information, you'll need a blood test from your doctor.

"Urine tests are very sensitive and will turn positive at low levels of usually 25, 50, or 100 mIU/mL, which can all detect pregnancy in the week after a missed period," says Maureen Baldwin, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University. "Blood tests can give a concentration of the hormone and are pretty accurate, even from lab to lab."

At your first prenatal appointment, your doctor will test hCG levels to confirm your pregnancy. But they probably won't monitor hCG levels too closely at future appointments. That's because normal numbers vary greatly, and one test won't let you know if the baby is thriving.

hCG Levels Chart

The hCG levels chart below shows typical numbers throughout pregnancy.

Note that an hCG level greater than 25 mIU/mL can confirm a pregnancy with an at-home pregnancy test. People who aren't pregnant typically have hCG levels less than 5 mIU/mL.

Weeks From Last Menstrual Period (LMP) hCG Level in milli-international units per milliliter (mIU/mL)
3 weeks from LMP 5–50 mIU/mL
4 weeks from LMP 5–426 mIU/mL
5 weeks from LMP 18–7,340 mIU/mL
6 weeks from LMP 1,080–56,500 mIU/mL
7–8 weeks from LMP 7,650–229,000 mIU/mL
9–12 weeks from LMP 25,700–288,000 mIU/mL
13–16 weeks from LMP 13,300–254,00 mIU/mL
17–24 weeks from LMP 4,060–165,400 mIU/mL
25–40 weeks from LMP 3,640–117,000 mIU/mL

Because every pregnancy is different, it's important not to compare your levels to anyone else. Try not to read too much into any single measurement, as what really matters, in early pregnancy, is whether your hCG levels are increasing.

Tracking hCG Levels by Week

Although hCG isn't usually monitored closely, your doctor may track hCG if they're concerned about your pregnancy health—for example, if you're bleeding, cramping, or showing other signs of miscarriage.

According to Dr. Baldwin, subsequent tests, usually taken 48 hours apart, let doctors analyze trends in hCG levels. Rapidly rising, falling, or plateauing levels may require further testing.

After the pregnancy can be seen on ultrasound, doctors will probably stop measuring hCG altogether. At this point, "the best measure of a normally-growing pregnancy is the monitoring of uterine size by your provider," says Dr. Baldwin.

Adds Dr. Lang: "If a pelvic ultrasound shows a pregnancy inside the uterus with a heartbeat, there is no reason to keep checking hCG levels. They no longer predict the continuation of the pregnancy."

When hCG Level Charts Signal a Problem

In instances where an initial hCG measurement is lower than expected, a second test will most likely be ordered. Additionally. if you're experiencing signs of miscarriage, hCG levels may be monitored. When there's a decline in the level of hCG from the first test to the second test, this often means a miscarriage is likely, also known as an impending miscarriage.

Lower than average hCG levels may also indicate an ectopic pregnancy, which occurs outside of the uterus. Unfortunately, an ectopic pregnancy cannot be carried to term and requires immediate treatment. This includes either medicine or surgery to end the pregnancy.

Lower than average hCG levels can indicate:

  • Impending miscarriage
  • Ectopic pregnancy
  • Blighted ovum
  • Miscalculation of your conception date


Higher than average hCG levels can indicate:

  • Carrying multiples
  • Molar pregnancy
  • Abnormal growth on the uterus
  • Miscalculation of your conception date

There's nothing you can do to increase your hCG levels when they're in decline. Typically, when an early miscarriage occurs, there's a chromosomal abnormality or another issue with the embryo that causes the pregnancy to not be viable (and the body responds by lowering the hCG levels).

On the other hand, if your hCG levels are higher than average, this can indicate a miscalculation of your conception date. High hCG levels can also signal a molar pregnancy (hydatidiform mole) or a pregnancy with multiples.

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Sources
Parents uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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