beta 78, doubling time unknown

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

Please stay.

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.

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.

Tomorrow is another day

Shots begin again tomorrow. I'm looking forward to them. As I think I've said before (certainly to SF; less certainly here), the shots are actually my favorite time period in this whole messy process.

It feels like you're doing something. Things are growing. The things you're doing are actually helping the eggs along, unlike when you're hoping a maybe-fertilized egg will find the strength to implant. It's different from waiting.

The doctor said today he's adding Ganirelix, a medicine to suppress ovulation until we do the trigger stot, near the end of the course of Gonal-F. It seems I tend toward a premature LH surge. He says that's correctable, and that we're moving forward.

I have hope.

Keep moving forward.

For now, though, I will acquiesce to the cat on my arm and stop typing one-handed and scratch him.

Quick update

The good trend continued at this morning's ultrasound. This time around our doctor is happy with the number, size, and "symmetry" of the follicles. What looked like a systemic problem last time now looks like it might just have been a too-low dosage of the injectables.

Of course, that means we're just right back into the cycle of waiting and hoping... but at least it looks like there may be justification for that hope again.

It's back

I have to admit that I spent the last couple of weeks almost totally convinced that this cycle was going to fail. It was bad enough that twenty-four hours after the ultrasound, the cautiously good news had not sunk in at all.

But today I have caught myself feeling hope several times. It feels kind of battered and bruised, but it is back.

Cautiously optimistic

Today's ultrasound showed six promising follicles and one probable dud.

My RE seemed pleased, and said this cycle looks much better than the last one: "You *can* be nudged."

If I understand him correctly, if the decreased ovarian reserve were severe, we would have seen about the same response as last time despite the higher dose of medicine. Last time, though, SF and I had thought we understood the response was pretty good, and we were completely blindsided by the news that it wasn't. I seem to have developed a wariness about our doctor's optimism -- maybe he's only optimistic because we haven't uncovered the next problem yet.

But if you don't have that kind of optimism, what do you have?

And will it be a little bit easier whatever happens this time, now that I have thought for days straight about worst case scenarios?

Just as an aside ... I think it was the student doctor's first ultrasound of this kind. (ouch!) My RE explained to her what the ovaries and the uterine lining looked like on the screen, and I had the astonishing realization that I knew what we were looking at before she did.