The day before beta

Jest passin' the time. Every now and then I pee on a piece of cardboard, squint, and alternately decide

a) it's wayyy darker omg must start googling strollers now! now! how are we going to afford daycare? should I try for a VBAC?
b) it's wayyy lighter and I wonder if I'll get all the way to misoprostol, now my preferred abortifacient, or if it'll poop out on its own.

Neither of these reactions is either warranted or helpful.

I'm just not very good at sitting and waiting.

I'm going to be in a meeting for most of tomorrow. I've asked the nurse to email me the beta results. Probably my favorite thing about this practice is that they don't mind emailing results.  I have some serious PTSD from the hold music at my last REs. I'd be waiting and waiting and listening to the loop and my heart pound and pretty soon my blood pressure started to shoot up as soon as the music started. Plus I'm always afraid I'll hear something wrong or write it down wrong or something. With email there is only the barest pause between seeing that I have the email and seeing the results. 

So. Tomorrow.

6dp5dt (11dpo)

Annnnnnd we have a line!

Faint, but there. And while such a faint line is bad news at 14dpo, it's okay at 11dpo.  Just have to see where this one goes, if this little thing has what it needs to continue its journey.

Trying to stay quiet. Keep breathing, keep living, and if I do a bit of hoping, that's okay. One of the things I think I've learned on this journey is that almost nothing can dislodge a good pregnancy and absolutely nothing can save a bad one.  The coin is still flipping in the air as to which this one is -- but it hasn't landed yet, which means we're in with a chance. 

8dp5dt: nope.

Game's pretty much over. For some insane reason, Big Shiny Fertility Factory likes to do their betas two goddamn weeks after a 5-day transfer. This makes zero sense, except in the respect that it save them the effort of even dealing with women with short-lived chemical pregnancies. By 19dpo, either you're showing up good and dark on a plain ol' urine test, or you're negative and have been for some time. Which means that you've spent at least a solid week getting painful, expensive, and unnecessary rump-injections. Worse, many women (not me) may have spent an entire extra week consuming neither alcohol, caffeine, nor sushi.

I delicately pointed this out to my nurse, who agreed to let me come in on Friday (15dpo). Much better. At least I can spend the weekend letting my glutes recover.

I'm okay. I'm starting to try to wrap my head around the possibility that this may not be the story of my difficult journey towards the family I have always envisioned. It may be the story of my journey towards letting go of that vision.

I have an embarrassingly large collection of beautiful high-end baby carriers. I guess when the time comes I'll sell them and buy myself something really, really pretty.

5dp5dt: the evidence for and against

Data that support my being pregnant this cycle:

1. I did a super good job of distracting myself. In fact, we decided to up and get married with two weeks' notice, which definitely took my mind off Things.  The planning was a bit crazy, but the wedding was lovely. And three days after the wedding, we transferred two blastocysts to my uterus.
    
2. My lining rocked, which is to say that it was over 8mm, which for an Asherman's patient is awesome.
    
3. It would be hilarious if I got pregnant the same week I got married, so people could count back and make jokes about shotgun weddings.
    
4. I have been chock full of symptoms. Heavy draggy cramps, sore breasts, I got 'em. I have been quietly Sure for days.
    
5. My acupuncturist said I had really good energy. 

Data that support my not being pregnant this cycle:

1. It's 5dp5dt, or 10dpo, and my test strips are stark, stark white. I have been pregnant four times, not counting the lame-o chemical. I have never not had at least a faint line by now. Good betas, bad betas, I always had something by now.

There are 5 reasons why I am pregnant this cycle, and only 1 reason why I am not. The mathematically-inclined observer will note that 5>1.

Sadly, though, I think that single piece of evidence against rather outweighs  the five votes for.

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!

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.

4dp5dt: photographic evidence

It's... not really that faint, is it.

Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my.

4dp5dt

My camera battery's dead, and I'm the last person in North America without a camera on her cell phone. So until I get home tonight and can charge my camera, you're just going to have to imagine:

A pregnancy test, with a faint but definite line.

I'm... just sitting here very very quietly.

9dp5dt:: No beta today, weirdly enough!

Morning pee-stick report: FRER (First Response Early Results, for those not on the crazytrain), faint but definite positive. Reputed to have a sensitivity of 12.5 miu. IC (that's Internet Cheapie, wondfro, to be precise): darker than last night, but still exceedingly faint. Reputed to have a sensitivity of 25 miu.

I'm not going for my beta today; I'm going tomorrow. It's not as crazy as it sounds. My doctor usually tests at 10dp5dt (15 dpo), but he offered me the option of doing it a day early because 10dp falls on a Saturday, and it's a bit less convenient to get to the lab on a Saturday.

Of course I assumed that neither man nor beast could keep me from my day-early beta. That is just not who I am. Like Pippin, I always have to look. But now... I'm strangely moved to wait.

For once, I have a feeling that this is out of my hands. Maybe I'm just reluctant to crack open that box and make the cat alive or dead. For whatever reason, I'm just sitting quietly at this crossroads for one more day.

8dp5dt: ambiguous, but perhaps still in the game.

A very, very, very light line. Before anyone gets excited, a very low beta at this many DPO is... well... it's not a no, but it's definitely a keep-your-receipts-for-those-booties situation. To give you an idea, if my beta tomorrow is

Between 5-14
Approximately an 80% chance of chemical pregnancy, 10% chance of miscarriage, 7% chance of ectopic, 3% chance of live birth.

Between 15-28
69% chemical, 25% miscarriage, 5% ectopic, 1% live birth.

Between 29-45
This is where things get gooder -- about a 32% chance each of chemical, miscarriage, and live birth, remainder ectopic.

Between 46-66
I doubt this could happen overnight, but live births are into the 40s.

(for anyone else aboard the crazytrain, reference here)

Now, my test is going to be at 14dpo, and the above statistics are from 15dpo. So I might just promote myself a category. So we're thinking -- high 20s, friends. High 20s. Because a 32% chance? Would be like another shot, a whole fresh IVF cycle. I'll take it over a flat BFN.

7dp5dt:: a story

I thought I saw a line, but I didn't. The end.

Wanna hear it again?

6dt5dt: the right way to get a BFN

5:30 a.m. Wake up when 2-year old decides to join you in bed.

5:35 a.m. Lie awake trying to convince yourself that you don't have to pee.

5:36 a.m. Consider that this pee will be FMU (that's First Morning Urine, for any of you not on the crazytrain).

5:38 a.m. Pee. Test.

5:38-6:00 a.m. Stare at pristine white test, willing a shadow of a line to appear.

6:01 a.m. Give up, crawl back into bed.

6:02 a.m. Have toddler jam chubby arm around your neck, nestling fragrant head under your chin. Breathe. Think about how lucky you are to have this small, strange, snuggly person unfolding before your eyes every single day. Twine ankles with your best beloved, in your comfortable bed, with your healthy child between the two of you. Cry a bit from the happy, and also the hormones.

6:15 a.m. Drift off for a second sleep, smiling.


So... yeah. Still BFN. Still wish it weren't. But you know, I think I'm on to something here. I'm going to start scheduling my HPTs for right before a designated snuggletime. There's a depth I just can't plunge to when the Small Boy shoves his arm around me and sighs.

I have also been thinking a bit about the Slow Path. A year or two ago, I was sure that my struggles to conceive had done nothing but damage me as a person. I was more guarded, anxious, cynical, angry, bitter. Damaged. I thought that I was a worse mother than I would have been if I had traveled a smoother path.

But I've started to think that it's not true. I think that I genuinely have, to a great extent, healed. I can tell, because some of the patterns I feel myself bending into now are simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar: my brain bends that way, but it hasn't for a long time. And that's very, very good.

I don't know if I'm a better mother because of infertility, but I'm starting to cautiously think that I might not be a worse one.

5dp5dt:: BFN

Sparkling white, glittering white, white like an Alpine peak, white like a Tea Party rally.

Some might say that it's early to feel pessimistic about this cycle, but I don't like to leave things till the last minute¹. I don't know. I've felt sort of off, grungy, a bit wrong -- I thought maybe it Meant Something -- but right this second I think maybe it means that I'm taking large amounts of exogenous hormones.

So I'm looking forward a bit. I can do probably one more FET. Just one? you might ask. But I thought you had a cool dozen-plus-two embryos on ice!

On transfer day, we had the unpleasant surprise of learning that seven embryos had to be defrosted in order for us to get two to transfer. This is an abysmal thaw rate; thaw rates (for vitrified embryos) are usually between 50-90%. I don't know whether there's something about my embryos that makes them freeze/thaw badly, whether the lab didn't do a good job freezing them, or whether the lab didn't do a good job thawing them. Regardless, I now have 7 embryos left, two frozen using the rapid-vitrification and five slow-frozen. Slow-frozen embryos usually have much worse thaw rates than vitrified, although much worse than 2/7 is *scribbles on piece of paper* approximately crap%. So... I don't have quite the bounty that I thought I had. I can probably get one more FET out of it, though. And after that, it's back into the fray.

¹This is a lie.

4dp5dt, 6am

Woke up at 4, couldn't get back to sleep. At 6, got up and peed on stick. Result: a negative so white it could cause snow blindness. Took my glasses off, tilted it hither and yon. Not even a decent evap to entertain myself with.

So it begins...


ETA Lest it all sound too desolate: spending a splendid cuddly day with Small Boy. I set up a pop-up tent-tunnel combination that I scored at Value Village last year and have just now realized that he's old enough for. Later on we'll go to the library, maybe to Whole Foods. It will be a nice Sunday, regardless.

3dp5dt

Symptoms: few. I swing between wild optimism and wild pessimism. Things that help: snuggling Small Boy, eating nice food. Things that don't help: reading various fertility boards.

I think I have a touch of PTSD over the last time we did this. I keep losing track of where and when I am now. The despair licks at the edges of my brain, and I realize that I've forgotten, once again, that this is not the same as it was. Once I look around and connect with the present, I feel a thousand percent better.

For my successful pregnancy, I got a (very faint) positive in the evening of 4dp5dt. For my unsuccessful pregnancy, it was 5dp5dt. I currently have in my possession 45 pregnancy tests (shut up. it's a long story. no, it's not.) Peeing will commence tomorrow evening. Who am I kidding: peeing will commence tomorrow morning. In fact, it's a wonder I'm not peeing on something right now.

5dp5dt

I'm grateful. I'm hopeful. I'm cautious, but... so far so good, right? Yeah. Ever since the brief time I was pregnant I've been missing this, longing to feel this again -- the humming, the sense of busyness within my body, strange and wonderful, explosive with possibility.

Right here right now I am so glad to be here again. Keep your fingers crossed for me, y'all.

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.

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.

6dp5dt: HOLY CRAP

HOLY CRAP.
I don't seem able to say much else.

I've been randomly yelling "HOLY CRAP" ever since around 8pm last night.

See, I was feeling low. L-O-W. That morning's pee-stick had been stark white, and I was so very sick of staring at thin urine-soaked pieces of cardboard, willing them to say other than what they clearly said.

Just for fun (...) I decided to torture myself by doing one more before going to sleep. And HOLY CRAP. Within 6 minutes, a line, a respectable line, a line that I did not need a full-spectrum light to see.

Quavering, I yelled for my sweetheart. She dashed in, convinced that I was bleeding. I shoved the stick at her, and made her tell me about 10 times that I wasn't hallucinating.

Then I peed on three more (I buy them in bulk lots of 50, okay? shush.) As you can see, results were similar.

It just seemed so unreal. Eventually, after some hysterical typing with BFF, I went to sleep. I often wake up in the middle of the night, and when I wake up, I start thinking and thinking, usually dark thoughts, and I can't get back to sleep. Usually when this happens I pop on my headphones and listen to something soporific from librivox.org (I'm currently working on The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew). It lulls me right to sleep; I haven't had any bad insomnia since discovering this strategy.

Anyway, last night I woke up in the middle of the night, and I didn't put my headphones on. I just lay there, full of thoughts, light thoughts, joyful thoughts, hopeful thoughts.

This morning's first pee (supposedly the most concentrated) came out a good deal fainter than last night. I waited an hour and then tried again and it was a bit darker than last night. Dunno what that's about.

I know I'd be a fool to really celebrate this early. Chemical pregnancies are extremely common, especially with IVF. So, so early. Much too early.

But I've got something to celebrate. I've never seen a second line before, excluding the trigger shot. There's a chance here. There's a real chance. If it doesn't work out I'm going to cuss and try to move on gracefully. But right now, just for this minute, this second, I am pregnant.

And I am grateful beyond belief.