plodding along.

I should have written this update Monday, after I got back from seeing Smiles. I know there are a few lovely people who've been following my story and I honestly didn't mean to worry anyone by not reporting back. I am very sorry. 

Here's what's been going on:

Went back to Posh Clinic on Monday. They took me back for blood work while Mr. Hope was still parking the car. I see a piece of paper on the top of my file with an hCG number. It was in the 67k range. I don't  know if this was from Wednesday or Friday, as I had blood draws at the satellite clinic both days. But I do know the number is low, especially since the previous Monday it had been in the 56k range. Immediately feel sick to my stomach.

In the waiting room, start running numbers through a doubling calculator on my phone. I know at this stage that it's normal for it to take up to three and a half days to double. If the 67k draw was on Wednesday, it had a doubling time of seven and a half days. If on Friday, fifteen days. Neither one looks good.

I look at hCG ranges by week. I'm still in a great range, number-wise. Even my chart had a "HIGH" flag on it. But I'm less concerned with the overall number than I am doubling time. I know this is because my numbers never doubled properly with the last pregnancy - that it's now an anxiety trigger for me. I figure I will ask Smiles about it when I see him.

We go back for the u/s. As I'm pulling down my pants I tell Mr. Hope that I have a bad feeling. He asks me why. I tell him I don't know; I just do. He gives me sad face. My heart is racing. I'm sure it's over. I am "sure" it's over before every u/s, but this time I'm really sure.

K, our favorite u/s tech, gets right down to it. Within seconds, we see Jellybean's heartbeat. I blurt out, "OH THANK GOD," and Mr. Hope squeezes my hand. I start asking questions. "Give me a minute," she says, not unkindly. 

Heart rate is 137. I panic for a second before she assures me this is a great number for where we're at. The crown-rump length is 10 mm, only one off from where they'd predicted last Monday. These are all good things.

The bleed has gotten slightly bigger and changed shape. It's no longer a pencil eraser but a long, skinny banana. Like a crescent, or the back end of parentheses. K tells us that it's in a good place for a bleed, behind the baby and not on top of it. This is reassuring.

We don't wait long to see Dr. Smiles. I am still a ball of nerves. When I walk into his office I say, "You know I'm about to lose my shit, right? You know this is happening." (Have I mentioned how much I love my doctor?)

He goes over my meds with me and decides to discontinue the lovenox (blood thinner) to see if it will help. Then he tells me that I'm still on bed rest.

I say, "Can we talk about this for a second? What are the advantages of full bed rest over modified?"

"None," he says. 

Um, okay.

He tells me that he's sure I've Googled enough to know that bed rest can't prevent a miscarriage, but to him, resting when there's a bleed seems intuitive. I ask about sitting with my feet up so I can work. He didn't realize that I can work from home, and when he does, he says, "If you're telling me all you're doing is moving from the couch to a chair with bathroom breaks, I'm fine with that." No standing too long, no cooking, no lifting, no walking the dog, no anything other than laying on the couch or sitting in a chair or using the potty.

This is an enormous relief to me, because the stress of not being able to work wasn't doing me a damned bit of good.

I ask about the hCGs and how they're not doubling any more. He tells me he doesn't care about that, because they plateau at a certain point anyway. But he didn't care about my ridiculously low hCG last time around, and we all know how that ended.

So then I say, "Be straight with me. What are the chances that this baby is going to make it?"

He chews this over for a second, then says, "Ninety-eight percent." 

"Really?" I say. "You're that confident?"

"Yes," he says. "I am."

As we leave the clinic, Mr. Hope says, "Those are really good odds." And he's right; they are. If someone told me I had a 98% chance of winning the lottery, I'd buy a ticket, no questions asked.

And yet the broken part of my brain thinks, "How can he be so sure?" and "What if I'm in the other 2%?" and "Why am I still terrified I'm going to lose this kid?"

At home I log onto my work laptop and see that I have 550+ emails backed up. This is with me checking sporadically on bed rest. We have a big event scheduled for the next day and I dive right in. Initially I think I'll work for two hours and then rest, but I don't. I work for five hours straight before feeling so exhausted that I have to lay down on the couch. 

I figure I'll update my blog in the morning. But when I wake up, the day of the event, I log on early and just never get off. I work steadily, with only a short break for a therapy appointment with Quirky and another to talk to Mr. Hope when he gets home for work, until eight o'clock. Seriously, it was 8 p.m. when I finally logged off. I got on the couch and was passing out within a couple of hours. 

So that brings us to today. Tomorrow morning, it's back to the clinic for another scan. I will say that I've had less discharge the past two days on modified bed rest than I did on the four and a half days of full bed rest. I hope this means the blood is reabsorbing or working its way out. I can handle modified bed rest, but during my session with Quirky I apparently talked without breathing for 20 minutes (I know she was thinking MANIC). I think this is because I went from working in an office where I'm in meetings with different people all day to being at home all by myself for most of the time. I think I miss interaction.

I'm starting to catch up on day job but am still behind on the freelance project. The project manager is getting antsy. She knows my history and I told her about being on bed rest but now being on modified. Her response was "Great! How far have you gotten?" Since I lost almost a full week, and went on bed rest literally the day after she asked for the last status update, the answer is NOT BLOODY FAR. But I didn't really say this. I just told her I was plodding along.

This is kind of how I feel about my life right now. I am plodding along. I get up, I do some stuff, I go to bed. Waiting for something to happen, or to not happen. Time moves slowly and quickly all at the same time.

I don't know what it will take for me to feel comfortable with this pregnancy. I felt good for two days after we saw the heartbeat and then I gushed red. So now I feel like nothing is guaranteed, it could end any second, and feeling comfortable just means setting yourself up for disappointment. It's not healthy, but it's where I am.

Tomorrow I will be eight weeks. We lost Nugget between weeks 8 and 9, but the weight week ultrasound already showed a slower heartbeat and signs of lagging growth. The gestational sac was too small, the yolk sac too big. All of my sacs are appropriately sized right now. So, maybe tomorrow. Maybe if the growth is appropriate and the heart is beating strong and there's no sign that Jellybean is going the way of the Nugget, maybe then I'll feel better?

Maybe?

and the fourth beta is...

...16,298!

(I know. My jaw almost hit the ground.)

For those of you who like numbers, that's a doubling time of 49.64 hours. Well within normal ranges.

Another milestone achieved.

I didn't find this out until almost 3 p.m., right before I had a conference call. I had back-to-back calls pretty much from the time I got back from the u/s appointment up until 5:30 (no joke), so that's why it's taken me so long to update.

As for the ultrasound, it revealed one gestational sac with a yolk sac, everything measuring perfectly. The tech said it was slightly early to see a fetal pole and that we should see the heartbeat next week. We go back on Monday.

We didn't get to see Dr. Smiles, who was getting ready to go away on vacation. Instead, we saw his PA. She didn't bat an eyelash when I mentioned the brown spotting, just put me on restrictions: no exercise, no sex, no overexertion of any kind until I have four consecutive days of no spotting. She said it's perfectly normal (which I knew, but logic and emotion don't always hang out together now do they?). If I see red, she said, she wants to hear about it, but otherwise, don't give it a second thought.

So I'm pregnant. I AM PREGNANT. Like, REALLY, TRULY pregnant. I don't even feel the knee-jerk reaction to add "for now," which was pretty much the ONLY thing I said last time around, after that bad second beta.

It's crazy that there's only one little one in there. According to Beta Base we're now in the sky-high zone for a singleton but still in the median for twins. Maybe I'm just growing a little overachiever in there. That would so be my kid.

I think once we see the heartbeat, I will feel even better. This time, when they tell me that seeing the heartbeat means a less than 5% chance of miscarriage, I might even believe it.

moment of truth.

I was probably more nervous about this morning's FRER than I have been about almost anything so far post-transfer. In part, because Kyla at Three Quarters Full posted a picture of her FRER yesterday, when she had a beta of 679. Literally ONE point from where I need to be in order to be doubling appropriately.

Now, I know all pee sticks are different, even from the same brand. But it's kind of like when you're making a recipe - you know your dish won't turn out EXACTLY like the picture, but you want it to look pretty close.

So I dipped the FRER and right away the test line was screaming red, even before anything hit the control line. I exhaled a little. Ten minutes later, I could see that the test line was brick red, super-dark, and the control line looked smudgey, and had more of a cherry color.

I took the stick back to my desk to look at Kyla's again. It's very close. If anything, my test line might be a little darker and my control line a little lighter. Obviously I can't look at two lines on a stick and translate that into a specific beta, but I went back and looked at the pictures from last cycle. I know that my beta was 508 on 12dp5dt and 1461 at 19dp5dt. I didn't take a test at 19dp5dt last cycle, because I'd moved on to every other day, but I did take one at 18dp5dt, and it looks similar to the one I took today.

Ergo, I do not think I will get a nasty surprise at today's beta. I think I will be scheduling my first ultrasound for next week.

In other news, Precious Pup needs to go back to the vet due to a small, smooth cyst on his front right paw that he keeps chewing at. This in addition to the fun post-op stuff he's still got going on. My poor little furbaby. I just want him to be healthy and happy for a few more years. Ideally five or six. I don't mean to be greedy but this dog is my heart. This morning, I woke up with him tucked between Mr. Hope and me, and he had one paw draped over my arm, NBD. It was the cutest thing.

And remember how my car totally crapped out at Posh Clinic on Friday? The repairs were going to run us a whopping $2,000. Not cool, car. I asked about a trade-in value and the dealership offered us a decent one. We'd still owe on the loan but if I put the money I would've spent in repairs on the loan instead, it doesn't leave all that much to roll over into a new loan. It's kind of like buying a car without a down payment. Another option is a short-term lease, like a year, just to get us out of the money pit. We're going back tonight to get me into something.

I'd taken today off from work thinking it would give me time to catch up on some things, but the universe has totally conspired against me. Now I'm leaving the house at my normal time, only it's to get Mr. Hope to work so that I can have the car today. Then it's the long drive to Posh Clinic for my third (and hopefully last!) beta, then back home to pick up PP for his vet appointment. Then I've got to get PP home and might have an hour before I have to leave to go get Mr. Hope so that we can go to the accountant's together to get our taxes done. Not sure how long that's going to take, but we'll need to grab at least a snack before we go to the car dealership because they never get you out in less than 2.5 to 3 hours.

Even so, I'll try to find a few minutes later today to update after I get my beta results. They usually don't call until the afternoon, but that should be between the vet appointment and the tax appointment. Fingers crossed!

and the second beta is...

...169!

Cycle Buddy had guessed it was going to be 172. I can't believe how close she was!

Other good news: estradiol is up to 146 and progesterone is up to 18.8. Blondie (aka Nurse Barbie) sounded genuinely excited for me this time and not, you know, like I was a total crackpot who needed to be handled with care.

To throw some more numbers at you, this beta shows a doubling time of 31.7 hours. Well within the 48-hour range.

I was supposed to go back on Monday for my third beta, but decided to push it to Tuesday since I'm taking that day off from work. I ran the numbers in a beta calculator and to stay within the nice, comfy 48-hour window, it will need to be about 678. If I reach or surpass that number by Tuesday, I'll have my first ultrasound the following week.

And because I'm me, yesterday had to be an Adventure of Epic Proportions. There is something about my car that doesn't like the trip to Posh Clinic. Last year, we blew out a tire on a pothole. Wrecked the rim and everything. Then there was the car accident on the way to an ultrasound. And yesterday, on the ride there, I got a warning light to service my power steering and power train system.

I called the dealership right after my ultrasound to see if I needed to have the car towed or if I could drive it back. It's a 34-mile drive, so I didn't want to risk anything. They didn't want to say, but after I said, "I am accepting full responsibility and releasing you of liability. In your expert opinion, can I drive it or do I need a tow?" she said, "You can drive it."

Okay then.

Only, when I tried to pull out of my parallel parking spot, I discovered that the power steering was gone. It wasn't working period. I popped the hood. It had plenty of fluid. This was something more serious. Fantastic!

I called AAA. They said the wait time was 75 minutes. In the snow.

I wanted to cry.

But, as luck would have it, the tow guy showed up within 8 minutes. He loaded my car onto a flatbed and deposited us both at the dealership, where I was greeted by a coworker picking up some equipment that I had in my car and the BFF, who drove me home.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't an EPIC journey home. But it took long enough. If my car hadn't crapped out I would've been home by 10:45. As it stood, I didn't get there until 12:30. And lost half a day's work to boot.

So, I'm going back on Tuesday, and between now and then, my goal is to focus on the freelance project, pulling everything together for the accountant, and keeping myself busy in general. Next weekend we have Mini-Hope and I'm not looking forward to it. For one thing, I'm going to have to put in a lot of time on the freelance project. For another, I have to hide all evidence of this pregnancy and lie about the shot I take once a night (I've told her it's for my psoriasis).

But lastly, the biggest issue is this: Most of the time the kid drives me nuts. I didn't raise her, and I don't approve of the way she's been raised. She's spoiled. Bratty. She's not always nice to Precious Pup. Her grandmother has given her massive food issues, so the kid sneak-eats when we're sleeping and begs for more food (particularly junk) when we're awake. It is a constant battle. Plus, she just turns into a zombie in front of the TV. Like, for hours.

I have spent years trying to forge a relationship with this kid. Sometimes she loves me. Most of the time she just tries to manipulate me. I don't go for it; her dad does. I am the Mean One Who Says No.

God, I sound like a horrible bitch, don't I? I don't mean to. Dealing with Mini-Hope just wears me out, and at a time when I don't have any energy to begin with, I'm kind of dreading that.

two months and four weeks.

Two months ago today, I miscarried Nugget. Her heart had stopped a little over a week before this, or so we're guessing. The violent way in which the miscarriage happened has scarred me in ways I can't even begin to articulate. When I think about what happened, the scenes play out in my head like something from a movie. Once you see it, it can't be unseen.

Today, I am four weeks pregnant. At 9dp5dt and using the new, non-bobo box of FRER tests, I am getting a strong pinkish-red line. A line that comes up immediately, even before the dye has reached the control line. I don't even have to hold my breath; it's just there.

Yesterday there were cramps - the good kind. I had these with Nugget; they were lingering implantation cramps as she continued to snuggle in. I like having cramps. I would kill to get morning sickness. I rejoice when my boobs are tender. I don't even mind the ugly chin zits. These signs that I am still pregnant - that there is a tiny life or lives growing inside of me - I need these things. They help keep the crazy at bay.

Can we talk about that for a second? Not my crazy, but the one or two tiny lives thing. I have always said I'd be okay with one. I was an only child. As a kid I wished I'd had a sibling - a built-in playmate - but you know, I turned out okayish nonethless. Financially, one is easier to handle. Space-wise, one is better. Stress-wise, one is probably more ideal.

But.

I often joke that the Holy Grail of the IF world is boy/girl twins. It's like the fertility jackpot. An insta-family. Twins would scare me on several different levels, not the least of which is the toll they'd take on my body. But I would be lying if I didn't say that sometimes Mr. Hope and I fantasize about the B/G twins scenario.

FETs are notorious for being slow starters, yet I got my first positive pee stick at 5dp5dt, a full day earlier than I did last time. I got a shadowy squinter the day before that. So I was kind of hoping this might mean twins. My beta of 35 points more toward singleton, though.

Honestly? Just one would be fine. One healthy little take-home baby.

There are so many hurdles left to clear. The next is my second beta tomorrow. Then I will likely be back at the clinic on Monday or Tuesday for another blood draw. Then it's the first ultrasound, then the second, and so on, and so forth.

For now, I'm trying to take it one day at a time.

and the first beta is...

...35.

The NP (not Fave NP, but this young little blonde who always makes me feel dumb) said that this was "appropriate" for where I am. I checked out some online charts (because that's what Agonies do, yo) and it seems just under the  median for Beta Base (47). I'm trying not to stress too much, because last time I had a great first beta (in the 500s!) and we all know how that turned out. This time, I'm more concerned with appropriate doubling times.

Getting the beta drawn wasn't easy. When I asked Blondie to run it, she said, "Do we usually run the hCG this early?"

I said, "No, but I've been getting positive pregnancy tests and if you don't run it I'm going to make myself crazy staring at lines."

"There's a reason we don't run them this early," she said. "Because it's too early to really tell anything."

I told her I wanted to run it again on Friday and that I'd still come in for my OTD on Monday. "I just need to know," I said. "I need data. I was in beta hell for weeks last time."

She grudgingly agreed, but wouldn't let me schedule the Friday appointment. "Let's see what the physician advises."

I kind of wanted to flip her the bird.

When she called with the results, it was in a voice dripping with condescension. Keep in mind that this girl has be at least a decade younger than me and probably has the eggs of a teenager. She's young and fit and pretty enough to be a catalog model.

"We're not going to bring you back until Monday," she informs me.

"I'd really like to run it again on Friday," I said, "to see if it's doubling appropriately. I can get it drawn at a local lab if you like."

"Hold on."

When she gets back on the line, she says, "We can bring you in, but I want you to understand that if it's not going well, there's nothing we can do. There's no medicine we can give you to fix it."

"I know that," I said, in a semi-snappy voice. "If it's bad news, then I can prepare. I just want to know."

"Fine."

She booked me for Friday at 9:45 a.m.

I'm proud of myself for insisting on the second beta. I wish I'd stood up for myself more the previous pregnancy.

I am a little worried about my hormone levels. My estradiol was 117 (I think) and my progesterone was 11.5. Both seemed low to me but Blondie wasn't concerned. Even so, I'm upping my progesterone tonight to 1.5 cc. That's what the prescription was written for, but the clinic told me to do 1 cc and I'd already self-upped to 1.25.

I'm also on the suppositories, so that might be why they're not concerned - those supposedly don't show up in the blood work.

It would be fantastic if I could relax just a little, and enjoy these early days of pregnancy. I doubt that's happening, but you know - it's nice to dream.