Beta 3: 22dpo/17dp5dt

Third beta was 2992, with a doubling time of 56 hours. I'm told that it's normal for the doubling time to slow a bit. Nevertheless, I am nervous as a bag of cats. I don't like that the slope of the line is changing so much -- but it's still within normal range.

Keep going, Awesome Embryo. Just hang in there.

Ultrasound scheduled for next Wednesday. Holy shit.

5dp5dt

Taken 5 minutes after dippin'. Got a bit darker after it dried. Faint, but by no means the most negative test I've ever seen.

I'm quietly, hesitantly pleased. I mean, I've had pee sticks that looked like this turn into miscarriages, twice. But I've also had pee sticks that looked like this turn into an absolutely hilarious 3 year old.

I am unreservedly pleased with one aspect of my foresight. When I asked the Magic 8-ball, I didn't just ask "will I get pregnant" -- I asked "will I see a positive pregnancy test this cycle?" Now that it's been unequivocally proven wrong, I can disregard the entire prophecy. Otherwise I know that right now I'd be convinced that the "no" was foretelling an impending miscarriage. Other TTC crazy superstitious atheist agnostic pagan Jews, take note!

So now it's just hanging on until my beta on Wednesday, and (hopefully) the repeat on Friday. Here we go!

Yesterday and today

Yesterday I felt serenely, even smugly confident that I was pregnant. I could just feel it, you know? I even peed on one of my cheapie internet pregnancy tests. Yes, for anyone keeping score, that was two days past transfer, and no, no excuse about "peeing out" the trigger; on a frozen cycle there is no trigger. That was all crazy me. So was the test I took this morning (all snowy white, of course).

Today I feel very sure that I'm not. My excellent piece of evidence is this: I have a promotional Magic 8 ball that I got as a trade show giveaway. It has been very accurate in the past. It said I'm not pregnant. Q.E.D.

Of my positive pregnancy tests, I got one at 5dp5dt (miscarriage), one at 4dp5dt (Small Boy), one at 8dp5dt (chemical), and one at 4dp5dt  (miscarriage).

This part is... hard.

14DPO Beta results

Beta: 89.7
Progesterone: 88.5

Still holding my breath. I'm surprised it was as low as that, given my test sticks.  For my miscarriage, my 14dpo beta was 74. For my successful pregnancy, it was 115. So this result is pretty much halfway between the two.

I have burned holes with my eyes looking at this chart. That chart is for 15dpo, and would give me about an 85% chance of live birth. My hope is just that this is a rising number, not a falling number. I got such a dark line so early -- maybe twins that resolved to a singleton? Or maybe twins that resolved to... yeah.

Someone just put me into cryogenic sleep until Monday afternoon, please.

Boy oh boy does blogger need a "reply" option...

...or a blogger who either can figure out how to correctly install a widget. Or a blogger who can get around to picking up stakes and moving to wordpress.

Shannon recently commented
Doesn't the hormone concentration in your pee vary a bit with your fluid intake?

Why, yes. Yes, it does. Also, the dye concentration on pee sticks varies from lot to lot and even within a box. Also, it is completely insane to try and treat a qualitative test like this as a quantitative test. These are all things that would be at the forefront of the mind of someone who wasn't completely deranged.


Juliane asked
Do you think twins? When is your ultrasound? 

My guess is that the U/S would be at 7w? That's assuming the betas come back anything worth writing home about. My beta is this Saturday, Nov 19, hopefully with a follow-up on Monday,  Nov 21. Hilariously, I'm supposed to go on a 7 hour Thanksgiving roadtrip the next day.

As for twins... maybe? I don't know? It is awfully early for a line like that. But I'm hoping that it's just one bold, brassy, strong little embryo. Twins would not be a good thing for me. I'm 38, hypertensive, I was insulin-dependent during my last pregnancy, I'm really short, there's a laundry list of other reasons why that would be a tough situation. My first two IVFs were single-embryo transfers because I was so terrified of twins. But time went on, and I got sadder and more desperate, and it was a double-embryo transfer that resulted in our '09 son. For the previous and this FET, we transferred two. So... it could be. I'll think about that later.

Love to Lathany and Olive, too.

Tonight I'm going to try and figure out some kind of bloggy-reply-thingie fer sure.

P.S. Four hours after this morning's somewhat-disappointing pee stick, I tried again, with much more satisfactory results, the same as last night I think or mayyyybe a touch darker. Yes. Crazy is me.

5dp5dt

Line lighter this morning? I know, I need to just put the pee sticks away and stand back. Breathe until the beta on Saturday.

But oh, the familiar familiar crazy. It's like my brain was just waiting to pop into the groove of the crazy-track.

Just gotta stay loose. HAHAHA. Just got to keep breathing. That I can do.

Waiting for the flood

I stopped the progesterone on Monday. My RE called later that day, with a kind "sorry" -- I didn't need to hear it, but I appreciated it.

For next round, which will be in bloody October (well, the transfer will be), we're going to switch to IM progesterone. I don't believe that there's a strong reason to do so, but I don't mind. The shots hurt, but Crinone isn't exactly pleasant, and maybe it was the lack of a sharps container that interfered with the last cycle.

I've been thinking, too, about fresh cycles. Two weeks ago I was fat and sassy, sitting on my 14 frozen embryos. Now I'm down to 7, 5 of which are slow-frozen. I have a fantasy that maybe I'll be the one person whose embryos like slow-freezing better than vitrification (or the lab fucked up the vitrifying on my embryos) and that the five I socked away from my very first cycle will thaw beautifully. But chances are that they won't. That means that if the next FET doesn't work I'll likely be starting fresh again, at age 38 this time.

That's okay. It'd be less scary this time, since I know the process inside and out by now. But this time, unlike last time, I have limits. First time 'round I pretty much would have kept going until I fell over. This time I've got... more exit conditions.

Mainly it's about how well I can hold my shit together. I have Small Boy now, and he deserves to have both of his mothers firing on all cylinders. I'm willing to allow for a substantial performance hit, given that I believe that a sibling would be of long-term use to him, but there's a limit.

Right now it's in his best interest for me to try for quite a long time and not succeed, because apparently my BFN-coping mechanism is to buy Small Boy a buttload of stuff. His first train set -- clothes -- some DVDs of vintage Sesame Street -- if I don't catch promptly, this kid is going to be spoiled rotten. I did not budget for this when figuring fertility expenses.

The view from Beta Hell

Second-guessing my decision to stay on meds. No matter what number I get tomorrow, it's not going to change the fact that the 15dpo number was 8.

Okay, let's think this through:

Option #1: chemical. The overwhelming chance is that this is chemical. If it's chemical, I'm simply prolonging the process. On the other hand, I'm not doing any harm to anything except my sense of serenity.

Option #2: miscarriage. The next largest chance is miscarriage; i.e., that it limps along for a few more weeks -- I get a number like 24 on Monday, and hey! it more than doubled! yay! Except that it's still only at 24. Then it doesn't quite double, goes up to, I dunno, 41. Okay, okay, almost a decent doubling time, and the doubling time's a range, right? Then the next beta is great. Let's say a 39 hour doubling time, woo hoo! This continues, a grab bag of mediocre and great results, until finally the doctor says "enough with the betas, come back for an ultrasound in a few weeks." I do and: there's no heartbeat. Or there is a heartbeat, and I get released to an OB. At 10 weeks I go in and... there's no heartbeat. Even if I'm lucky and it all passes naturally, it a) hurts and b) takes me months to get my period back so we can start again. This is the worst-case scenario, except for equally hideous

Option #3: ectopic. In this universe, everything proceeds exactly as with Option #2, except that at 6 weeks there's nothing in my uterus. I get a big fat shot of methotrexate, and wait for everything to work its way out (I'm not even running the mental simulation of if the shot doesn't work. Just no.) It a) hurts and b) takes me months to get my period back so we can start again.

Option #4: live birth. This is the unicorn I would be chasing by keeping going with my meds if tomorrow's beta has any sort of decent rise. This is the unicorn that all of us who google "beta hell success stories" chase.

#3 is out of my hands, right; even if I stop the meds, an ectopic would still keep going even without progesterone and estrogen. I just have to keep my fingers crossed for that one. Stopping meds promptly would cut short the tedious and unpleasant #1, and bypass the excrutiating #2. On the other hand, it would be eliminating the slim possibility of #4.

I just don't know. I'm not a gambler, I've never bought a lottery ticket in my life. Chemical + miscarriage = 90%. I could logic myself into saying that since it's so likely that I'm in the 90%, I should stop my meds. But... the truth is, I wouldn't be doing it out of certainty that I'm in the 90% of chemical + m/c; I'd be doing it out of fear that I'm in the 10% of miscarriage.

Prudence? Fear? The smart decision, or the pussy one?

Writing it all out makes me feel better, but I'm still not sure what I'm going to do if, tomorrow, the number has gone up in any sort of meaningful way.

24DPO beta

3838.

Doubling time: 49.7 hours.

There's no progesterone because I wasn't due for another beta. I've been cramping a whole lot (no spotting though), and my OHSS suddenly got all better, and I was utterly convinced that I was miscarrying again. So I fished out one of the many beta lab slips from my last miscarriage (m/c betas don't care about progesterone). I just waltzed right in and gave it to lab and got my blood sucked. I figure what are they gonna do, put the blood back? Not tell me the results?

Anyway, the take home messages are

1. As of 8:30 Thursday morning, I am still pregnant and everything is still in normal range;
2. I have truly never been crazier than I am right now.

Really. Everyone else must be feeling really, really sane right now because I am using up all the crazy.

I'm going to go home and sob with relief and bury my head in Animal Crossing. I figure this set of results will give me 24-36 hours of relief before the crazy starts up again.

How my family took it...

Well? They're excited? They were stunned? They're calling me every day? My mom read up on OHSS and quizzed me to make sure that I didn't have a severe case (I don't)?

I have such mixed feelings about having told them. Part of me wants to bask in the attention and approval, which I am finally receiving in buckets. The last thing I did that they really approved of was 12 years ago, when I enrolled in grad school. I dropped out a few years later, became a lesbian, it's all been downhill since then. They love me, and they try, but I can tell that they have to work really hard to be supportive of me and my choices.

I get tolerance, and I'm grateful for that. I don't get offended when they discuss, in front of me, what gift can possibly be large enough for them to give my sister and her husband for their upcoming 15th wedding anniversary (my darling and I have been together for 11 years, and no, I'm not holding my breathe waiting for a card). I reinforce them heavily every time they mention my partner's name or send her greetings or remember her birthday (which they have done two years running now -- major progress).

But yeah, I get tolerance. I don't get approval. Having it now is freaking me out a little, and maybe making me a little angry.

I didn't feel that I had much of a choice about telling them, since there was no way I could travel as huge and OHSS-y as I am. But I can't get past the thought: if I miscarry again, then not only will I be heartbroken but I'll have disappointed my parents.

In other news, keep staring at my taut abdomen. Whatcha doin in there, huh? Whatcha doin? Still alive? Gimme a sign, here.

7dp3dt: nope

I was nervous and sickish all day, because the last time I got a positive on the evening of 5dp5dt, which equates to 7dp3dt.

Not this time. Stolidly negative.

I can't decide whether I should be holding on to hope or preparing myself for failure. I believe that attitude counts for bupkiss, so it's strictly a question of what will serve me better. Probably that means I should be steeling myself for the negative. After all, no one needs preparation to be happy.

Right now, in my progesterone funk, all I can think is I can't do this. But of course I can, and I will. I'm not close to quitting, and the alternative to quitting is marching on. My insurance allows three IVF attempts, but unlimited IUIs. I could keep going for a long time. I don't know what else to do.

CD22, Day 21 of BCPs, Day 7 of Lupron

There hasn't been much to report. This stage of IVF is boring, just weeks of preparing by taking birth control pills and, for the last third, Lupron. All of this is meant to lull my ovaries into a false sense of security a sweet slumber, so they will be well rested when we blast high-decibel Metallica at them begin the stimulation medications.

Once again The Apothecary Shop covered themselves with glory, sending

1. extra infinitesimally tiny Lupron needles -- 31 gauge! I can barely see the needles, much less feel them.
2. a nice styrofoam cooler which will in the future find itself full of ice and beer
3. instructions on how to give all of the shots. Not that we don't know how by now, but it's comforting, anyway.

Oh, and I forgot to tell them that I already had a Follistim pen and wallet, so they sent one along with the Follistim. The wallet's a nice hard-shelled case. It will not go to waste, however. It's a pretty good size for my Nintendo DS Lite.

Other than the reproductive stuff, things have been a bit crazy. Our beloved insane poodle mix got into some mouse poison, spent three days in the animal hospital, and nearly died. Research revealed that this all could have been avoided if the pest control company had, you know, followed the instructions on the poison and used tamper-resistant baits stations. I've sent a letter asking them to pay the nearly $2000 vet bill and swear to me that they've put safeguards in place to make sure this never happens again. If they refuse I'll have to sue them in small claims court and get state agencies involved. It's all stressful, but I don't see letting them get away with it, not when the next dog or kid could die if they don't start following the rules.

I thought that the BCPs and Lupron had been treating me pretty well, but then my sweetie pointed out that I've been on a bad bad headtrip for lo these ten days now. I take my last pill tonight, and we're all hoping that my mood returns to normal once the pills are out of my system.

Oh, and I forgot to report the conversation I had with Chatty Phlebotomist when I went in to have my blood drawn:

Chatty Phlebotomist: Wow, we see you here a lot.
Me: Yes, I'm a patient of Dr. Fertility's. Soon you'll be seeing me for blood draws every other day.
CP:Ohhh, Dr. Fertility. You know (leans forward confidentially) it'll happen when you least expect it.
Me: I don't think so.

7dp5dt: watch me not freak out

cramps. spotting. three fainter peesticks tonight. more dilute urine maybe? maybe? please?

did get blood drawn for a beta today, so we'll see.

also, have myself an extremely uncomfortable case of OHSS. can't stand up straight, can't inhale deeply, can't bend over, can't walk quickly. it'll be worth it, unless it isn't.

big presentation tomorrow morning for a project we've been working on for months. my brain could not be less present -- and oh yeah, i'll be curled over the podium. that won't look weird.

gahhhhhhhh.

the stats that don't show up on the lab slips

Number of hours spent obsessively Googling all that could go wrong with this cycle: 5
Number of women I found with E2 lower than mine who got canceled, had OHSS, or both: nine gazillion
Number of women I found with E2 higher than mine who were just fine, proceeded to transfer, and now have adorable bairns in their sigs: dunno, I'm sure I wasn't looking, why read about that when you could read about the bad outcomes?
Prolonged hysterical crying fits I had on my beloved's soft bosom: one
People who are now allowed to use the internet only for pre-approved purposes: me