Beta #6 and Additional Test Pictures

Fabulous news, my beta hCG came back today at 2880. That's a doubling time of 51.53 hours and I am officially scheduled for an ultrasound! I also made this chart today to remind myself how exponential increases work, and it's very pretty:

The other good news, at least I think it's good news, is that my giant OHSS-swollen belly is receding little by little. I no longer look grotesquely bloated and I'm much more comfortable overall. The slightly worrisome thing is that I've stopped vomiting and my nausea has receded to a dull roar that I can ignore most of the day; I was relying on that as another symptom of pregnancy and an indicator that all was proceeding as planned. Then again, it's wonderful not to be so sick all the time. I could really get used to this "eating food" thing.

Looking at the search criteria that have led people to this site over the past few days, I see that my picture of Wondfo test strips has gotten some action, so I am pleased to present here an updated photo showing my progression from 4dp5dt (9dpo) to 13dp5dt (18 dpo):

I stopped testing for two reasons: one, after you're producing a certain amount of hCG, the test stops being very sensitive and the line sort of maxes out (though in my experience it never got quite as dark as the control line.) And two, I ran out of tests. If you're looking to compare your own Wondfo test strip, here are the things I can say that might help: this is a singleton pregnancy, and it's really true that on the urine tests, a line is a line. You need a blood test to really give you a quantitative number. Good luck!

Beta #5

Great news - my beta hCG today showed that I'm up to 1510! I couldn't be prouder if it were an SAT score. (Although I understand that with the new SAT scoring system 1510 isn't that great... anyway. Cart before the horse much, Charlotte?) That's a doubling time of 39.47 hours, which makes me very happy. It also makes me think that I was right to feel that close monitoring is a double-edged sword; one result can make me flip out and the most important thing is to watch the trend. Of course, I know things can turn around at any time but at least today was a good day.

I did my first Lovenox shot last night with what I will call the Lindsey protocol: in very quickly, push very slowly, keep the needle in there for a while before taking it out. I also iced the skin before and after and kept pressure on the site afterwards. I have a veeeeeery faint bruise that you'd have to be looking for in order to see, so we're going to count that as a success.

My next blood test will be on Friday, so keep your fingers crossed for good news! Hopefully after that I'll be able to make an appointment for an ultrasound, which is great because then it gives me something new to obsess about.

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.

Beta #2 and That's Pretty Hard to Miss

My second beta (still only 14-15dpo depending on who you talk to) came back at 164. That's a doubling time of 41.81 hours, but who's counting? I'm very glad that the pregnancy appears to be viable, though of course I am now stressing about my next blood draw on Saturday morning. Today I am pregnant today I am pregnant today I am pregnant... There's always going to be something to worry about.

Because of the whole DVT excitement, I've known about the pregnancy for several days, but I was wondering yesterday whether I would have suspected anything if I had stuck to my plan to not test early. I've felt some waves of nausea intermittently since Monday, my funbags are getting sore and delightfully large, as the congestion from my cold has lessened I've started to notice that I'm smelling everything, and all I want to do is sleep. I could see myself writing off all of those things as some variant of normal, but then this morning at 6:30 AM, my body woke me up in the worst way possible: by sending a message to my brain that said "Hi, you need to get up so you can vomit right now." (And I did once actually sleep through a final exam in college, waking to my roommate shaking my shoulder and saying that my test had started 45 minutes ago. I thought that was a bad way to start the day, but this was worse!) I spent an hour curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor wondering why I don't mop it more often, and only after I had heroically crammed a cookie down my gullet did the nausea abate enough to let me take a shower and get to work. I stopped by the fertility clinic on my way in, still feeling shaky, and got my blood drawn for what would have been my first official beta. Now-Charlotte knew why the barfing had happened, but Ideal-Situation-No-Early-Testing-Charlotte would have had to be very stupid indeed to write it off as just another Thursday morning. So yes, I think I would have known, or at least seriously suspected that something was happening even if I had waited for today to test.

The nurses at the clinic suggested a few things, including eating something every 2 hours whether I was hungry or not, keeping food by the bed and having a snack when I get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and said that they would be willing to prescribe onandsetron if it got really bad. I don't want to take drugs if I can avoid it, but we'll see how it goes. In the meantime, positive thoughts for Saturday's blood draw!

Copy That, We Have Visual Confirmation

So although I was genuinely shocked yesterday when I got my lab results, I will confess to you now that it wasn't the first inkling I'd had that something weird might be happening down in ol' Uterustown. The sequence of events was as follows:

Monday - Embryo transfer in the morning, lay like a slug on the couch the rest of the day staring at the picture of my blastocyst. Cramps start around 3 PM.

Tuesday - Cramps continue and intensify.

Wednesday - Cramps continue and start to taper off in the afternoon/evening.

Thursday - Cramps are gone. Totally convinced that nothing was happening, besides the increasingly worrisome pain in my right leg.

Friday - Told I had a DVT in my calf and all hell breaks loose. Upon arriving home at 7 PM, decide to take a HPT even though it's only 4dp5dt since the result might have a huge effect on my treatment for the clot. It's negative, as expected. I sigh and toss it in the trash.

Saturday - Come down with a raging cold. Now I'm sneezing and coughing and my leg hurts and I'm lying around watching reality TV generally feeling sorry for myself. Near the end of the day I'm fooling around on my iPad and decide to Google side effects of Crinone, the progesterone gel I'm using instead of progesterone in oil. Sure enough, breast tenderness and enlargement are listed, which explains why the girls are starting to ache a bit. But then I look at a few message boards where women have discussed their experience with Crinone and most of them mentioned that their breasts started to hurt within a day or so of beginning Crinone, whereas mine only began aching a week and a half later. Huh. Before I go to bed, I take another HPT. It's also negative. This time I leave it on the edge of the sink and go to sleep.

Sunday - Harry was gone overnight, which was a good thing because I woke up early due to all the sneezing. This time I have some pretty concentrated urine to use for a test, so I take another one. It's negative again, so I flop back onto the bed and start Googling "6dp5dt BFN" to see whether it's possible that I might still be pregnant despite the negative result. But the cat is crying for his breakfast and the dog needs to go out for her walk so I drag my congested self out of bed to put in my contacts and start the day. I look back at the test and I see - no. No, wait, it's impossible. There's something there. It's a line. It's a faint line, but it's there. Wait, really? I have other tests under the sink. My hands are shaking so badly I can hardly get the box open. I take out a First Response Early Result, which is apparently the gold standard of early home pregnancy tests. While I'm waiting for the results, I compare the 6dp test to the 5dp test and the 4dp test. When you line them all up next to each other, you can see that there were very very faint lines after all. If I had seen them earlier, I would have chalked it up to wishful thinking or an evaporation error. I look back at the FRER. There are two lines on it. It's real. This is happening. I walk back into the bedroom and stare at my surroundings for a moment, bewildered, and then burst into tears. I think of Emma Thompson at the end of Sense and Sensibility when Hugh Grant tells her that he's not married and finally professes his love. I am not the only one crying. The cat is now standing on the bed meowing at me at the top of his little lungs that I am late in serving him breakfast. I can hear the dog down in the kitchen starting to whine that she needs to be let out. There is no choice but to start the day - pregnant. I am doing all of these things while I am pregnant.

When Harry comes home, I am incredibly impressed with my acting abilities. I'm in the kitchen doing food prep for the Superbowl later that night and I make some remarkably normal small talk. I say that I need his help changing the sheets on the bed and he follows me upstairs. We're standing next to the bathroom when my act starts to falter. I say weirdly "Oh, and there's something else I wanted to tell you" and I push the door open. I've lined all the tests up on the edge of the sink, including a digital with an unmistakable "Pregnant" result. He walks in, takes one look at them, and throws his arms around me. We're happy. We're freaked out. We're cautious because the lines are so faint. We're debating when to have a baby shower. We're wondering whether we should buy a house. We're speculating about whether it's a boy or a girl.

For your viewing pleasure, here's the picture of the FRER at 6dp5dt:

And here is the progression of Wondfo tests from 4dp5dt to this morning:

And while everything looks promising so far, I want to say that I have been convincing myself about once every hour since Sunday morning that this is a chemical pregnancy. Or that I am destined for an early miscarriage. Or a stillbirth. I'm so freaked out about all the things that can go wrong. I feel like I have never read a blog written by a woman who went through one IVF cycle and actually had a healthy pregnancy at the end of it. And those Wondfo tests are particularly worrisome: um, they are nowhere near as dark as I would like. If the amount of HCG in my body is doubling every day, then why aren't the lines twice as dark? I'm out of FRERs and I've debated buying more just to put my mind at ease, but that seems silly since my clinic is going to give me a much more accurate result after my second blood test tomorrow morning. And they're going to keep testing me to make sure my HCG keeps increasing, and then do ultrasounds to make sure that the pregnancy is progressing normally, and the reality is that this is a level of uncertainty I am just going to have to live with until the day I hold my baby in my arms. Then a whole new level of worrying will begin!

The only thing that helps is repeating a mantra that I've seen recommended for women who are pregnant again after a loss: "Today, I am pregnant." And it helps - today, I am pregnant. Today, I am grateful. There is nothing I can do except cultivate patience and calm for the tiny person growing in my belly. In a way, I think that everyone who gets pregnant after struggling with infertility has already struggled with a loss - the loss of our innocence. I feel joy about this pregnancy, but I know it can be taken away in an instant, so my joy is nearly equal to my terror. I also feel honored to have received so many positive comments on yesterday's post - thank you, thank you, thank you all. I hope to have more good news to report soon.

Beta Results: I'm Pregnant

So. Um. I'm pregnant. My beta HCG at 7dp5dt, or 12dpo, was 54. That's two days earlier than they normally would have tested, and even at 14dpo they consider anything above 25 to be positive. So that's happening.

In other astounding medical news, the ultrasound yesterday afternoon could not find the clot in my leg. They were quick to caution me that this result doesn't mean there's no clot, so I need to have additional ultrasounds to make sure it wasn't a false negative. They saved the images from the original scan and everybody agrees there was a clot there as of Friday, and clots take several months to go away, so it may have moved (to where?!?) or it may be a problem with instrumentation. I'll probably have my next leg ultrasound on Monday 2/13 but for now they are not starting me on Lovenox or anything else.

Anyway, I may or may not be growing a clot, but I am definitely growing a baby. Holy... [fill in expletive of choice here].