Betas #3, #4, and the Giant Belly of Unhappiness

Good news -  my 3rd beta hCG blood test on Saturday came back at 352, a doubling time of 43.56 hours. I am less pleased with my 4th beta test today, which came back at 650 and indicates a doubling time of 54.25 hours. I am slowing down production, or my embryo is. My clinic seems totally unconcerned but this is very much not the news I wanted to hear. I know, beta values vary widely. I know, the fact that my hCG still rising fairly dramatically and not falling or staying steady is a really good thing. But I am getting very frustrated at the fact that I'm stressing out over this every two days when a naturally occurring pregnancy doesn't go through this kind of monitoring. They have me going to the clinic every other morning at 7:30 AM to stand in the most depressing line in the world and get my arm stuck yet again, then I wait anxiously for results until midafternoon. Couldn't I do that every third morning, or every fourth? I feel like the only reason I'm going to these blood draw appointments so frequently is in case it turns out to be ectopic and therefore possibly life-threatening, which we might spot with consecutive hCG draws (but also might not. Ectopic pregnancies are tricky that way.) They won't schedule me for an ultrasound until my hCG comes back at 2500, which I think we can all agree is going to happen approximately, oh, never. 

These appointments are made way more stressful by the fact that these days, I am feeling pretty sick in the morning. I may have a mild case of late-onset OHSS, actually - around the middle of last week, right when my hCG was first beginning to climb, I started to feel like my abs were really sore. I looked in the mirror and my belly, which is usually pretty flat from my ribcage to my belly button, was sticking out. It has kept swelling like a balloon and is painful to the touch, and although I'm hiding it pretty well under sweaters, I feel huge. I don't look pregnant - it's my entire belly from the bottom of my sternum on down, and although this is a horrible image, I feel like the vibe I'm giving off is more "starving and full of worms" than "glowing expectant mother." I've asked my RE about it twice and both times the answer was that if I don't have shortness of breath or problems urinating, then I should just take it easy and wait for the swelling to gradually go down over time. I don't have any way of knowing, but I suspect that it might be contributing to my near-constant nausea and occasional vomiting. Or that could just be normal morning sickness. Either way, when my belly wakes up at 5:30 AM to let me know how unhappy it is, the last thing I want to think about is how I need to get on the road earlier than usual to go to yet another blood draw. I want as much time as possible to lie on my own bathroom floor and look at my dust bunnies and listen to crappy morning TV from the other room and regret eating last night's pizza. 

Anyway. I am cranky and uncomfortable and that is overshadowing how I really feel about this pregnancy, which is of course grateful and thrilled. I am also spending some time looking at this chart on Betabase.com for some perspective about my probably-fine-but-it-could-definitely-be-higher beta value. And G-d willing, I will keep having good news to report, so stay tuned.