I am so sad and so busy right now I can barely keep my head above water. We have some hard choices to make, choices I will outline when I have a minute ... but not yet. Not yet.

Off for the third blood draw. Here's hoping 8 days is enough to get to zero.

Falling

The test results came back earlier this afternoon. My hcg level dropped, so this pregnancy isn't viable. Right now the things I'm thankful for -- no Misoprostol, no ectopic pregnancy -- are pretty dreadful. But I'm still thankful, and hopeful, at this point at least, for next time.

beta 78, doubling time unknown

Just came across this post from The Waiting Womb, and it brought me to tears.

Please stay.

Update

JF called from work to say the official test this morning came back positive. (In the 70-somethings, I think she said.)

By itself, that doesn't tell us a lot -- we'll learn a lot more from Wednesday's test, because the big question now is whether that number is going up or not. But still, every test that doesn't come back negative is a good thing.

The limits of the Internet

There is a lot of information on the Internet. Good and bad, right and wrong ... as a librarian, I spend a lot of time explaining to people what it's good for and what it isn't good for. Some things you just won't find on the web.

One of those things, in my experience, is whether or not your pregnancy will survive. I can find lots of information about spotting during pregnancy, and spotting from progesterone gel, and cramping from progesterone gel, and cramping and spotting in pregnancy, and conflicting information about whether each of those things is normal or a danger signal.

But nowhere out there have I found a page that says, "JF, your pregnancy will last" and gives me 20 reasons not to worry.

Al Gore, when you created the Internet, you should have made it clairvoyant.

Out of words

After some spotting on Saturday, I woke in the middle of the night with cramps strong enough that they woke me up. No spotting then, but I'm afraid what we're seeing this morning probably means this cycle is over.


Ouch.

I don't know what the story behind Kurt Elling's "A New Body and Soul" is, but it clearly is a father addressing his new child, and bits of it make me wonder if his story is not so dissimilar to ours.

"Waiting too long for a sign you would come was what
nearly killed the spirit in the house within me
and when you appeared you brought an answer after praying
like a sailor sighting landfall on horizons of green"

and much later

"And that’s why our teachers teach 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider'
to the smallest ones:
We need a fight song to keep us moving along
I should’ve sung it when thinking you gone.
You weren’t lost / you were coming"

There are certainly days when I could use a fight song myself...

Knock knock? Who's there? Impatient JF. Impatient JF wh--

A friend gave me an extra test.

It called to me. I resisted.

It called again. Again I resisted.

It called again.

A struggle ensued. I peed on it. I'm not sure who won. Here's what happened next:



The oh-so-faint one is from yesterday, 11DPO; the darker one is from this morning. From what I can find on the web, the beta-hcg from the trigger shot should have left my system after 10 days.

I have to wait until Monday for a blood test, and then they will almost certainly want to check for doubling, so we won't know anything for certain for another week.

This is the earliest I've ever tested positive. The first time I got pregnant, the home test didn't go positive until CD36. The second time, a couple of months after that, I didn't test until I was almost 3 weeks past ovulation, and my first beta came back in the low 40s and didn't double.

This is just another kind of limbo. I guess in a way all of pregnancy is. Next week is so busy I'm sure it'll go quickly.

"So, what have you been up to?"

SF and I spent the weekend at my 10-year college reunion. The high points included spending time with close friends we don't see nearly often enough, trying a new dish at my favorite restaurant there, accepting our favorite professor's offer of his office phone for a call to our absent friend in England, and a serendipitous ride in a golf cart.

More difficult moments included the main thing people ask at reunions -- "So, what have you been up to?"

I've talked a lot in this blog, I think, about the difficulty of knowing how much to say and to whom. Ann's current post also touches on the question. As one of my close friends pointed out this weekend, infertility is "like a job" in the amount of time and attention it can consume. So when people who don't need the play-by-play ask how things have been, especially in a somewhat competitive situation like a reunion, I feel like there's a gaping hole in what I'm telling them -- as though their only logical reaction would be "Wait -- that's *all* you do in a week?"

Truth is, they're probably not listening that closely. Maybe I should take Ann's science metaphor in a different direction: those dealing with infertility are like Mad Scientists, working on our secret chemistry projects, projects that we're keeping under wraps for now, waiting for the day when we will unveil them and rule the world! Bwahahahaha!

I don't believe we should always keep infertility secret, that it isn't something we talk about in our culture, but there are times when it's more comfortable to keep your mouth shut, if you can get past worrying what other people think about you. For those times, I'll think of myself as the Mad Scientist, plotting world domination, and I will laugh quietly into my collar.

Bwahahahaha.

1/3 of the way through the wait

Back down a pound from yesterday -- still up 6 pounds since Monday with a great big belly. Not exactly where I want to be right before a class reunion, but whatever. At least it's college and not high school.

Yesterday was an early, busy day at work. I had to be there in time to visit four school grades before 11:00, which meant arriving at work two hours before I usually do. When I got home, we had dinner and SF decided to take a nap. I thought, I'm not really in the mood to sleep, but I'll go curl up and maybe read a little.

Didn't open the book. Also didn't wake up again, except blearily to take medicine, for 11 hours. SF blames the progesterone, especially since now (after 11 hours asleep and 1 hour awake) I could easily go back to bed. So weird ...

The last leviathan

The ovidrel has kicked in, and my belly is huge again. HUGE. And sore. It was sort of funny last time. This time it hurts too much to be funny. My ovaries feel like they're about the size of oranges.

Replaced with pudding

For the first time in months, we don't have any medicine in our house. None on the shelf of the fridge, none on the counter, none in the mail. Instead, we have bowls of butterscotch pudding cooling on the empty shelf in the fridge. It's a nice feeling, for the moment.

So far as I know, yesterday's ultrasound couldn't have been better. I have a 12 mm lining, 8 follicles, and good hormone levels. The doctor cautioned us that even cycles that look great on paper don't always result in pregnancy, but for now I'm going to hold onto the idea that things are looking good. He decided we had the "luxury" of one more day of stims, and the nurse gave us a sample so we didn't have to order (and pay for) another pen. We're to add progesterone suppositories for 12 days starting Monday. I'm not looking forward to that, but I'm game if it might help.

All this has had me thinking about his style of information-giving. Each cycle that we've learned had a problem, we thought was going smoothly. When I was on Femara and ovulated, we thought that was great. Later on, we found out the eggs were probably of poor quality. When I was on Follistim and ovulated, we thought that was great, too, but later found out our numbers weren't so hot -- 4 follicles when the doctor wanted to see 6-8. Last cycle, my numbers were up and we thought that was great, but the hormone levels showed I probably ovulated too early meaning, again, poor quality eggs. This time, we think he's fixed all of those problems, but I can't help but wonder what's out there that our doctor hasn't told us? What is he seeing on the ultrasounds and in the blood work that we don't yet know to look for?

I realize this is not an exact science, and I try to ask questions, but sometimes I don't know the questions to ask.