FET #1: Beta #1: 9dp5dt: We couldn't wait!

We decided not to wait until tomorrow.

My husband Will thought of a creative way for me to get my beta drawn today at the hospital that didn't involve the ER. So we decided to give his idea a go. Ultimately, if you can believe it, Will ended up drawing my blood himself (he was on call) and hand delivering it to the central lab. Despite me not being an inpatient, they graciously ran the results. I was a little nervous that Will doing the venipuncture could turn into a train wreck with the combination of me having chemo-scarred veins that make me a difficult stick plus being on lovenox and Will not drawing blood all that often (or really, at all since his residency), but he did great and got a vein on the first try. Go Will!

So we have the results. And you guys were right, there was a second line. I am (a little bit) pregnant!

The numbers are lowish, which is not unexpected given the faintness of the lines.

My beta is 26.8

progesterone is 4.87

I'm taking steps immediately to remedy the low progesterone - upping my suppositories and adding oral progesterone until tomorrow, when I'll be picking up PIO (progesterone in ethyl oleate) for an every other day injection.

I spoke to the nurse in Denver and she said they like to see the HCG at 50 at this point, so 26.8 is lower than optimal. We will recheck beta on Tuesday morning, which will be off a bit in timing, since today's beta wasn't drawn until about 3:00PM. But we'll see where we are at at that point.

I asked the nurse if a number like this ever turns out ok and she said she has seen betas as low as 12 turn out to be real live babies, so that was good to hear.

Honestly, I was expecting a lower number than we got, so I was pleasantly surprised. (I guess there is a silver lining for having rock bottom expectations?) I even thought I might have imagined the lines, or that they were evaporation lines, so was half expecting the beta to be 0. In that context, 26.8 sounds pretty good!

We know that whatever embryo took is chromosomally normal (can't imagine there is more than one with a number like this). We also know they biopsied the trophectoderm (which forms the placenta) to do the FISH and microarray analysis. So I'm imagining that there were many fewer cells there maybe to form this connection to my blood supply and that there is a lot of catch up hopefully going on now and in the next little while. Plus FETs are slower, according to you guys. These are my optimistic thoughts at least.

Grow little embryo, grow and firmly attach!

Oh, God, here's hoping.

Would love to hear specific low beta success stories at this point. Got one to share? I'm all ears.

Mo

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