Beta#1: 4/14/2009, 11am = 1049
Beta#2: 4/16/2009, 9am = 1811

I spent the last two days thinking, if it could just be at least 2000, then I can relax, then I can know it’s okay. My hands were shaking all day today, waiting for the phone call. Despite the fact that I was feeling a little nauseated and feeling some definite pregnancy cramps/ligament stretching, I still was nervous. What if it’s bad news? I could almost hear the nurse’s voice in my head, saying she was sorry. I was mostly fine until about 1pm, and when there was still no call my mind went into overdrive. Not pretty.

So for all of you waiting anxiously, sorry, but I didn’t get my voicemail until 3pm when I went on my break. And then I didn’t really have time to do much besides update twitter.

The nurse opened the voicemail with, “I just wanted to say, congratulations! I am just so happy for you.” So I figured it wasn’t bad news. She continued to say that my blood level was 1811. I was disappointed. Not upset, but just… disappointed. It’s not GREAT, you know? I want GREAT, like Devin’s numbers all were. I want something really really reassuring. I didn’t quite get it.

BUT. The nurse continued to say that they look for doubling times between 2 and 3 days, and I’m right on track for 3, so they are perfectly happy with it and she would see us at the ultrasound next Wednesday.

And then I thought, well duh. Did I really expect it to suddenly take off? I knew from the first beta that this pregnancy has a slower doubling time. Still within the normal range, but the lower end. So this number falls right in line with the HPTs – see, they weren’t wrong… this one definitely was rising much, much slower than my first pregnancy. This is a slow starter, apparently.

Tonight I calculated my doubling time online: 58.39 hours (according to betabase). It’s not too far off the average on the singleton betabase chart. But then look at the breakdown of the doubling time at these levels. Notice where 58 hours falls? Right smack in the median group. Wow, that makes me feel good. Normal is good. Median is good.

Even the spotting is becoming a little bit more normal in my mind. I’ve heard so many stories about people who spotted through their pregnancy, sometimes even heavier than what I’m dealing with. I expect it now. I figure if my beta is still going up, and I’ve been spotting for a week, as long as it doesn’t get worse then it’s probably just one of those things… the things that only exist to drive me insane.

So now I’m just holding my breath until the ultrasound. I just want to know that something is alive in there.

The spotting continues. It has become almost comical. (I said almost.)

The thing is, when someone says “spotting” they usually describe a tiny spot seen only on toilet paper when wiping. My spotting? Blood spot the size of a walnut on my panty liner. And bright red. You can understand the panic attacks this induced.

The last two days the spotting has gotten less and much lighter – more CM, less actual blood. They’re always very watery. And they always stop. One spot, stop. One spot, streaking, stop. At this point I kind of expect to see something and blink in surprize when my panty liner is clean. “Ah ha!” I say, “But you’re not tricking me into thinking you’re gone!”

I’ve been trying to figure out what the pattern is. The nurse thinks it’s just an irritated cervix, but I can’t help but think if that’s the case, wouldn’t the spotting happen after I put progesterone in? But it’s not. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that the spotting happened just before I put a new dose in. I take three pills a day, spaced evenly every 8-ish hours. So it seemed a little odd when I looked at my notes and saw that the big spots came at the end of those 8 hour periods, in the last hours before my next dose. So I called and asked if they could test my progesterone tomorrow along with my hcg.

Unfortunately the nurse told me that the suppositories work very locally, they absorb through the vagina into the uterus area… they don’t really have a systemic effect. So a blood test won’t really show the true situation with the progesterone. (If it were the IM progesterone, however, then it would definitely be in my entire system, and a blood test would be accurate.) This does explain why they haven’t run any progesterone checks. *sigh* So now I’m wondering… does that mean while on suppositories you’re guaranteed to have enough progesterone in your system and I shouldn’t worry about it? My idea is that maybe I could take more suppositories through the day… take 4 a day instead of 3. If the spotten lessens, then maybe that was the problem. If it doesn’t, then probably not. I’m going to mention it to the nurse tomorrow. I mean, hell, why not, right?

But the thing is, the nurses don’t seem too concerned. She actually told me today that not only is spotting in IVF pregnancies common, but she sees more with spotting than without. So they seem to be treating this as a totally normal occurrence with no bad implications, and not as something worrisome that needs to be treated. I’m not really sure if that’s better or worse. (Better, because if they’re not concerned then it’s probably all okay in there; worse because they’re not really trying to even figure out what the problem is!)

It’s all very confusing. This is exactly the same dosage I was on for my first pregnancy, which had zero spotting whatsoever, which lends itself to the thought that this is not low progesterone (which you would think would be a recurring problem), but something else. Then again, my body has changed significantly since my first pregnancy, so maybe that’s not a good way to judge it.

Easy answer: take 4/day and stop overthinking it. Maybe all those success stories you guys are giving me are working… it’s starting to feel a little less scary. (But only a little.)

::

Today was an interesting day for me. First day back at work. No one asked me for news, so I thought, well, maybe I’ll just keep it to myself until tomorrow when I have the next beta results. But finally someone asked me and I told her the news. Everyone was very excited for me, even though I myself couldn’t work up a whole lot of excitement yet.

They said that they are really relieved – and you could see tension seep out from their shoulders – because a coworker is pregnant too. Just found out while I was gone. And I guess they’ve spent the last week worrying about how on earth to tell me if I came back with bad news. Notice that I had been there half the day before I told my news, and no one said a PEEP about the coworker. They were all chittering to themselves asking if I’d said anything yet, too nervous to ask. It was really sweet. I’m not sure I’ve heard of a place of employment being so sensitive to the emotions of an infertile before! It makes me really glad that I’ve been open with them all about my journey, and that I shared my news with them today.

Regardless, I don’t know how I feel about the coworker being pregnant. One of my first thoughts was the worry, what if I lose this baby and she has hers? I think that would be the end of it there. I do not see me being able to work alongside someone getting big and pregnant after I lost mine. (And also, it’s rather sad that I spent part of my day mentally constructing plans for this contingency… that I even think that way.) I think there is the potential for this to be a good thing… but right now I’m just too worried about how it could be a Bad Thing.

And I admit… I’m a little bit sad and frustrated because it is My Turn and I don’t want to share. Not just because of the fears, but because damnit I want to be the pregnant one. I’m apparently in the middle of a huge baby boom, and that irritates me… as if that causes people to overlook how freaking special this pregnancy is. Silly? Probably. But I’m allowed to feel selfish once in a while. (I’ll get over it. … Maybe.)

::

Beta in the morning. Nervous? Hell yes. Always the worry. But, my body says pregnant.

I am gassy as all hell. Oh dear, I’m not sure how this is going to go, working with other people and all. Not good.

Today I had a lot of stomach tenderness… the ligaments pulling and stretching. It kind of made me smile, actually. Maybe I had these in my first pregnancy and just didn’t recognize them… but I sure do now. It’s a comforting, familiar feeling.

I actually felt my stomach itself be a little weird several times today… apparently an empty stomach makes me feel a little not good. Not puke-worthy or anything (yet), but definitely there is an uncomfortable hollowness that makes me feel a bit sick. I noted how different this is from Devin’s pregnancy… I guess this is why they call it morning sickness, since that’s when your stomach tends to be empty. With Devin it wasn’t this empty-triggered thing. I just felt like puking. Randomly. Without warning, with no trigger. (At least, that’s how I remember it.) I felt sick when I was hungry, sick when I was full, sick when I was eating. It was kind of a no-win situation all the way around, that one. Hopefully if this one progresses like this I can manage it by eating appropriately. That would be nice.

Then there’s the lightness in my head I get once in a while when I stand up suddenly or turn the wrong way. Again, not very pronounced, but enough that my vision blurs very slightly.

Oh… and the moods. I know part of it is the stress… maybe more than a part of it. I’m a little bit short-tempered lately… about everything. I was telling Den it’s like I have this bitchy little hen sitting in my head, bitching bitching bitching about every little thing. Pleasant words come out of my mouth and I smile politely, but that voice in my head just keeps yapping on, snarking about every. little. thing. I’m working to keep it under control and not snap at people for no reason. Cause that would be bad. (And Den even said tonight that he hadn’t noticed me being snarkier than usual with him. Yay, success! He’s usually the first to notice…. and, erhm, the first to recieve.)

So yeah, my body is pretty happily chugging along here, still pregnant.

Today’s HPTs (FRER on the top, Answer on the bottom. The tests may look the same and be made by the same manufacturer, as people say, but the lines on them show up very differently!)

These are the last ones, because they were the only ones left in the house… I do not intend to buy any more!

::

My flight back home was something akin to torture. I cannot really tell you why I was so stressed out, but I had this horrible feeling of forboding about flying while pregnant and spotting, like somehow the flight would knock something loose and cause a miscarriage in earnest. For the last few days I’ve had a lot of dread about the actual flights.

Our first flight was a small prop plane, with a lot of noise and a lot of vibration. It was a short flight, thankfully, but I ran to the bathroom afterwards to discover more bright red blood. That seemed to send me into a full-blown panic. I spent the next two flights thinking about my beta and imagining the worst and just feeling sick to my stomach.

The next two flights revealed only leftover spotting during my many checks during our long layovers. Paranoid much?

When we got home I immediately got into my car and drove to the clinic to get my blood drawn. It wasn’t really an immediate necessity for them or the cycle, but it was for my sanity. I needed it now. And I did feel a kind of peace afterwards… like somehow now I had done everything I could and at least I’d be getting the answer soon.

Of course, as I posted, the phone call came and it was a good answer. The actual number left me a little lackluster, though. I felt like I ought to be more relieved, but I’m really not. Now I’m hoping that the next beta and the ultrasound next week are what does the trick, but I’m also fairly certain they won’t solve the problem either. Getting the spotting to stop, however, would go a LONG ways towards restoring my sanity. On the (rare) days that I don’t have any new spotting I actually start to perk up a little and start thinking that maybe I can get excited about this. But, damn, every time I see red I have to remind myself that this could end at any time. I do not want this constant reminder. I am already WELL aware of the risks. Sigh.

But just being home has soothed a frayed corner of me. I know that there is nothing that can be done at this point, no matter where I am – and yet all I could think about was getting home and going into the clinic. Not that they could fix anything, but maybe they could give me some information, maybe they could reassure me. And also I find it’s easy to fall into my old routines at work and forget about the worries, forget that I am pregnant for a little while. It is not a bad thing at this point. Perhaps vacation had too much sitting around doing nothing but fretting.

Regardless, I am home now and with my first beta behind me I am starting to feel a little of the tension ebb from my body. Maybe I will sleep well tonight.

Maybe the spotting will stop. Maybe.

::

Good news about the Cherry tree, the tree we planted for Devin: it is not entirely dead, and is budding.

The bad news about the tree is that only one of the remaining three branches is alive and budding. One fucking branch.

To be perfectly honest I don’t even know if it’s worth holding on to. We’ll trim it back and that one branch should become the new trunk, but it will never be the same. This year we will not get a new photo of the tree “growing.” It is deformed and stunted – gone backwards instead of forwards, less instead of more. The whole thing just makes me incredibly angry.

Even if it does keep growing, I’ll never think of it the same way as I did last year. I have cut myself off from it in my mind and heart. It no longer has significance to me. It’s just a damn tree that almost died. Maybe that will change. Maybe it won’t.

::

I have mentioned here before about my Oreo girl, my dad’s dog. She is, and always will be, my first baby. She’s nearing 14 years old now. I got her when I was 12. I raised her. I trained her. I loved her. I love her still, even though she lives so far away. I cannot put into words how much of my life has been spent with this dog, how much she has seen me through.

One of the things I’ve always looked forward to is getting a picture of her with my child. When Devin died I was just devastated – I hadn’t gotten a picture of her with me when I was pregnant. I had nothing of the two of them together. And she is getting older, I really don’t know if she will make it to see my next child.

So while I was there I made a point to take some pictures of Oreo with Sheepie.

They are just so perfect.

I took a nap after our very long flights and my blood draw, but kept my phone right next to me. I woke up and the damn phone was dead! So I had to plug it in and check my voicemail… there was a message.

Nurse says I’m definitely pregnant, beta was 1049. Which to me sounds a little on the low side for 23dpo, but obviously there is a very large range of normal and I kind of already figured that this one was a slow starter, given the light HPTs I was getting. They’ve scheduled my ultrasound for next wednesday at 10am, and I am opting to have a second blood draw in two days just to hopefully reassure me.

I feel like I ought to be more relieved by a good beta, but I’m not really. Still just so guarded.

The spotting continues. Off and on. A little here, a little there, never all that much, never staying.

Edit: Found some more HPTs stashed in my bathroom… a FRER and an Answer. Both have the test line darker than the control line now. So I think it’s safe to say that my HCG has been appropriately rising so far. It’s so nice to see dark lines!!

More spotting this morning… more brownish this time. And again, nothing after.

I did call the nurses, I just got the call back. Basically the answer is what I expected: spotting can be normal, especially since I’m using prometrium (which can irritate the cervix), I go in for my blood test when I get back and they’ll give me a call as soon as they get the results, we’re all hoping for the best, but there’s nothing I can do about the spotting, and it’s too early for them to check anything. It’s just wait and see.

I have a feeling I’m not going to be feeling better for a while.

I think I am in some form of pregnancy hell. The spotting comes and goes, comes and goes… never very much, and it goes away, but it’s left me a paranoid freak. I think I go to the bathroom every 10 minutes to check. If I notice any spotting I lay down and take it easy (not like I’m doing anything strenuous while on vacation to start with, though – I’m doing a lot of sitting… and more sitting). Thankfully the spotting has actually been getting less each time… today’s spotting was some very light streaking in my CM, that’s it. And I guess after a point you do stop panicking in quite the same way, after you’ve seen spotting for the fifth time. But holy hell I am tired of this.

I’ll be calling the nurse tomorrow to figure out what they want to do (I would have called yesterday, but weekend and all), I am assuming on tuesday when I get my bloodtest they’ll also have me come in for a check. I just want someone to tell me what’s going on – to either tell me that things don’t look good, or to tell me that things look fine and this spotting is just one of those things. I just need some freaking answers here.

Getting the spotting to stop would be wonderful, too. If this keeps up I am going to be a fucking wreck by the end of this. I have no idea how I’m going to be able to function at work. I am quite nervous about going to work and having to sit in a chair and walk around and do all the things I’m supposed to do and somehow actually concentrate on what I’m doing without screwing up royally. I just really don’t know how I’m going to be functional.

::

We did something today I’m not entirely sure we should have done – we told extended family. We had no intentions to, you see. But then after dinner my mom did a little presentation for us.

Everyone in the family and extended friends, the huge circle of people that my mom knows, has been saving pop bottles and cans. Here in BC you can return them for a small refund, usually $.05 per can, more for bottles. So all these people have been saving them and giving them to my mom, who cashes them in and puts the money in a savings account. She has been doing this for a year now. She also ran a small 50-50 raffle tonight, with half the proceeds going into the savings account.

And tonight she presented us a check for $500. For our “IVF fund.” They know we have insurance coverage, but we pay copays every cycle for the retrieval, the transfer, the meds. And my mom has made it her mission to ensure that the entire family pitched in to help us with this journey. It really is very overwhelming.

So Den and I made a snap decision. I thanked everyone for their help and support, told them how very much it means to us. And then I told them that it was all worthwhile, our last try worked. I said it was still very early and anything could happen, but right at this moment I am pregnant and they all helped me get here. I choked up at the end.

There were congratulations and some tears (not all from me). It felt a little weird to be congratulated right now, when I’m still so unsure of things. And yet it did feel right to tell. After all we have been through, after all the support we have been given, in a way it felt like we owed it to them all to share in the happy news too, not just if there is bad news. I know, we don’t actually owe anyone – my mom even said afterwards, “You didn’t have to tell everyone! I wasn’t going to say anything!” And yet… this is a part of our journey, too.

Plus, if this does all go to hell, I will not be the one spreading that news. I go home tomorrow and won’t be back for another year. Yes, that definitely factors in. If I miscarried, I would definitely tell all family about it. So why should they just wait for the crappy news?

::

I was really gagging hard this morning – no throw up, but almost a couple of times. It went away by afternoon, though. It was a very interesting combo of, “YAY, gagging!!” and “Shit, already?!”

All the food today has also made me horrifically gassy. Burping and farting. Charming. I think I’m going to have to eat smaller portions from now on… and really be careful what I’m eating.

I had a salad for lunch, a few cookie as snacks, and then for dinner we had pork chops, yams, and broccoli with a bottle of water. I then spent the next several hours having to pee every ten freakin’ minutes. I felt like my bladder was going to burst. And bloated! The gas! Oh! I’m having gurgles tonight, and it aint cramps. (And I wasn’t wrong last pregnancy – gas bubbles really feel like kicks sometimes, wow. Comforting when kicks; really freaky when gas.) I’m wondering about the broccoli… I think I remember reading that it can cause gas. So I think I’ll be avoiding that one for a while.

::

Lest I give the impression that I am stoic and unflinching, I spent all day either laying on or in my bed, or laying on the couch. Maybe it doesn’t do a damn thing, but I get freaking paranoid when I’m spotting. I found my hand trembling for a lot of the day. Not noticeably to others, but to me. It was definitely easier this time, since this just happened a few days ago… I reassured myself that it definitely seemed like the same thing, and it would probably just go away. And it did. But there’s always that fear, isn’t there. The what does this MEAN fear. The fear that this time it won’t stop.

This time it wasn’t accompanied with any cramping, though. I felt a little weirdness, but that could just have been because I was hyper-vigilant all day. I felt every little single thing… every gas bubble, every burp, every little tiny drop of progesterone. It’s like being on amber alert all fucking day. Not quite red alert, no need to panic yet… but just watching, waiting for the slightest thing to send me off the edge.

After a day of this, with no return of red after the initial spotting was slowly flushed out, I’m starting to relax slightly. And I’m exhausted.

My crazy symptoms of last week have all but disappeared… which, after reading and thinking a lot, isn’t too crazy sounding. It makes sense that in the weirdness of new hormones building my body would be all out of whack, but then would settle down into a new equilibrium. And that’s how it’s feeling right now. My sinuses aren’t 100% clear, especially when I lay down – but I can at least breathe now. The crazy tugging and pulling in my uterus has settled down into a full feeling and the occasional twinge. My boobs are still a little achy.

I am really really looking forward to getting home on Tuesday and going straight to the doctor’s office. Which sucks in a very big way, because I have been looking forward to this vacation, to this visit, for a long time and now that I’m here I’m so distracted and worn out with all this. I know it’s probably much better that I deal with this shit when I am not at work, but it still pisses me off that I’m not able to enjoy my vacation the way I was going to… that I’m looking forward to just being home. (I am not, however, looking forward to going back to work. How on earth am I going to manage that??)

In the meantime I am staying VERY guarded. Hopeful, but really scared to put too much into this yet.

And yet my ticker is now reading 5 weeks. I really wasn’t sure if I would see this day. I sit and stare at it, just being thankful, regardless of what may come.

Today I had lunch out. Came home, did some stuff online. Went to the bathroom… more blood. But just the spot, a big splotch of watery red blood on my panty liner – there was hardly any on my toilet paper, even. No cramping, nothing.

So apparently I am going to spot during this pregnancy. This time I am not going into a tailspin, because I at least am somewhat prepared. I am not very fond of this, but I don’t believe that this necessarily means the end is near. In a few days I will be home and hopefully be able to figure out what’s going on.

It is a little disconcerning for this pregnancy to have such a nervewracking start, though. I have a feeling if this pregnancy does end up continuing that I will need to be cutting back at work significantly. For now I am just taking it very easy and trying to stay positive. As long as this bleeding stays random and short-lived like this I think I can handle it.

Update: It’s been hours of light light leftover bleeding when I wiped, and now that is gone too. Another sigh of relief. But now I’ll be waiting for the next big splotch of blood. Stupid body, seriously. Grumble grumble…. paranoid…. grumble… basket of nerves… grumble…

I did mention that I had taken another test last night. As soon as I saw the bleeding the first thing I did was grab the second Answer test I had in the drawer, just to double check, just to see. I just looked at it to make sure it still had a line (it did), Den said it looked darker this time (I shrugged and said, “Looks like it, I guess”) and then tossed it in the drawer with all the others.

This evening I remembered I had it there so I pulled it out to take a look. Ummm, yeah. Just a little darker.

Here is the one from Tuesday morning, 11dpt, FMU. (And the pic with Sheepie.)

And this is the one I took last night, Thursday, 13dpt, first thing after getting home from a large dinner (ie, not ideal POAS circumstances).

So I guess I finally got that “obviously dark” line that I was waiting for. I’m glad it happened when it did, because I really really needed some reassurance yesterday, but at the same time I’m a little pissed because I can’t sit back and say, “There we go!” and feel all better now. The bleeding has ensured that I remain paranoid as hell about this. I want to knock on my uterus and say, “Hello?? Anyone still in there??”

::

This embryo was the only one we had not named, out of all the embryos we have transferred. After two failed cycles with named little embryos, Den said he didn’t want to name anything until I actually got pregnant, which I totally understand.

So here we are, pregnant (for the moment), and it has no name. I felt a little bad about that. We started tossing around silly ideas, laughing, and then forgetting about it.

The one thing that occurred to me was that it is Easter. I have a habit now of checking the shelves for little sheep, and of course right now there are a ton of little bunnies. I thought that was kind of cute. I tabled it as a possibility.

Yesterday we went to visit my Oma (grandma) in the care home she lives. Everything is decorated for Easter, which is of course not the least bit surprizing. We’re walking her down the hall in her wheelchair at a leisurely pace, looking at the art and photos on the wall. And then, all alone on a corkboard, there was this:

I stared and blinked, then pointed it out to Den and mom. A sheep and a bunny. I mean, really. People stared at me funny as I took a picture with my big fancy camera of the little thing on the corkboard.

Then tonight we went to go see a movie in the theatre (Knowing). It was a sci-fi/suspense kind of movie. And then just randomly, though it had absolutely no significance to the plot… you guessed it, bunnies. And not just like in the background that you glimpse. I’m talking a main character says, “Look! Bunnies! We get to keep them!” I leaned over to Den and hissed quietly, “Bunnies!!”

So it appears the moons have aligned and this embryo is the Bunny. Because, dude, even I cannot willfully ignore that many signs.