7dp5dt: never a dull moment: with update

Thank you all for your congratulations and your excitement for us! I'll be honest - I was reading a number of your words sitting in Grand Rounds yesterday and some of you made me cry. Really, thank you - so many of you - for taking the time to comment. It's like through your excitement, I can capture some of my own. I get a little shut down about this after all we've been through, but your happiness for us, the outpouring of encouragement and congratulations, broke through and helped me feel my own cautious hopefulness more.

So we are just the teensiest, weensiest bit pregnant. Again. Unbelievable, isn't it?!

I'm shocked. I've been emotionally preparing for over a year now to never be pregnant again, grieving in a way I never had before that maybe I would never see two lines on a test again, maybe I was not meant to ever carry a child, maybe not meant to even have children.

So it is pretty special to be right here. Still pre-beta, even. But here.

But of course, where is here? Here is still a very precarious place.

Yesterday was a busy day that required me to book it between various locations in the hospital. I have been at work all week but keeping pretty sedentary, slow-moving when I have to move, phoning into meetings instead of showing up, keeping fairly desk-bound and therapist-chair-bound. That was not possible yesterday, and I felt nervous about it, nervous that somehow it would jinx things because everything feels so fragile, so "I can't even believe it" still.

It was about 1:30pm yesterday, just after I had taken the huge leap of faith and audacity to schedule an OB appointment with a new OB I want to try out (because, yes, I was worried she would ALREADY not be taking patients with my due date...which turned out to be right, although they let me schedule anyway because I'm on the med school faculty). I ran to the bathroom on my way to yet another meeting, looked down at my pad, and there was pink. Not much, but still.

Ugh. Spotting. Already. WTF?

This has never boded well for me. "Boded," is that even a word?

It wasn't much, not even when I wiped, so I went to the meeting and tried to ignore the increasing cramping and sense of foreboding I was feeling. During the meeting, I decided that as soon as I could, I was canceling the remainder of my day and going home to lie down. After that meeting, Will and I had a brief phone consult with Dr. G at NYU, scheduled long prior to this transfer to discuss their egg donor program. Beyond the weirdness of talking about egg donors while having just gotten a positive hpt, the talk was interesting, actually. He recommended that considering that during our sixth and last pregnancy we lost a chromosomally normal little boy, that we should consider adding prednisone, lovenox, and IVIG to the mix this time...which we're already doing. But I've felt like I'm sneaking around doing, because neither of my REs supports it (Dr. Schl. calls it "hocus pocus"). So it was nice to have another leading RE actually say, yes, you should probably do that with this FET and also with a donor if you end up having to go that route. You may be in that small subset of women who need immunological intervention. Just to hear him say that was worth the whole call. While waiting for him to phone us, I cancelled my two remaining patients for the day and gave my administrator a heads up that I wasn't feeling well and was going home. Will bustled me into a taxi right afterward and I went home and straight to bed, cramping pretty moderately the whole time. Sigh.

The spotting, however, seems to have stopped. Thankfully. The uterine pain - and outside of uterus left-side pain - are still fairly intense at times (it made it hard to sleep), but I'm trying not to freak myself completely out (ectopic! impending miscarriage! lovenox-induced embryo-killing hemorrhage! Ahem, cough.)

I'm semi-successful at moments in soothing myself, at other times failing miserably.

Here's today's HPT:

Doesn't look a whole lot different to me than yesterday - but Will says it looks a little bit darker to him.

I decided I am going to get my progesterone and estrogen levels drawn this morning, just in case somehow my progesterone is too low and that's contributing to the spotting/cramping. I'll throw in an hcg level, you know, since I'm there anyway. I know it's only 12dpo, that I'm probably jumping the gun and being unreasonable, but oh well. I'm giving myself permission to be unreasonable for now...maybe even for the next few months...if I need to be. I'll update this post later today when I get the results.

I asked Will this morning if I was being a little crazy. "A little," he said. Poor Will.

Anybody else have spotting at this stage of the two week wait and have a real, live, take-home baby outcome? Or if I should start getting ready for this to be over, let me know that too.

And thanks - truly thanks - for being out there, and being with us in this. I'm grateful and happy to be here, really, I am, I just wish it didn't feel so tenuous.

Mo

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Update at 4:42pm: I finally heard from the nurse at my local NYC clinic. Been sweating bullets over here!

So...

HCG = 69.3!!
Progesterone = 34.3
Estrogen = 442

Not bad for 7dp5dt!

Now just to hope that the beta keeps going up! Phew!

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