Testing testing, 1, 2, 3...

I had blood work drawn four times this week.

I think that might be a record (during pregnancy itself, not IVF with its daily draws).

Join me for a week of pregnancy blood letting, if you will.

On Monday, I had blood drawn for a new test I had heard about from someone in the comments section.  It's called the MaterniT21 Plus test and is offered by Sequenom.  The test is not yet available in New York State, but somehow my hospital has a waiver, or gets a waiver for each patient, or something. It tests for Trisomy 21, 18, and 13. Now we should be in the clear for all of those, because this embryo (fetus?) had all chromosomes tested by microarray before we transferred back. But...I know there is a small error rate on the microarray....and we're very unlucky people. Since the test is noninvasive, we figured no reason not to get it, just to be sure. Our plan is to avoid amniocentesis and CVS, which are invasive and have a small risk of miscarriage, unless something super scary turns up in the next several weeks that seems to suggest one of those is necessary.

Let me pause to note how strange it feels to type "in the next several weeks," as though I'll still be pregnant then. I'm kind of living in both realities right now, the "imminent miscarriage" place, and the "things might just be all right" place. A little bizarre, but true.

Funny too that I would ever consider foregoing CVS and amnio. This is a big surprise to me and not what we thought we would choose. I'm generally a need-to-know person. But honestly we feel this pregnancy is so precious and delicate that we don't want to do anything that could even potentially damage it.

The MaterniT21 Plus test takes a couple of weeks to get results on. Ten business days, I think. I would be absolutely fine with having a down syndrome child, if I knew I could carry him/her to term. We're looking for a child who can live, not a perfect child. My fear is more another loss. Trisomies 13 and 18 aren't usually compatible with life (or with life past the first year). We might not continue a pregnancy with one of those disorders. But I know the chances of any of those being a problem are very slim. This is supposed to be a euploid embryo, and our clinic has a very good track record with their testing, but we just want to be thorough.

Tuesday, at 10 weeks 3 days, I had my progesterone and estrogen tested, which I was a little nervous about given the bleeding episode over the weekend. But the levels came back okayish with estrogen at 852, up from 833 last time (that's with two Vivelle patches) and progesterone down to 28.13 from the last result of 57 (that's with one endometrin suppository and only 1 /2 cc progesterone in ethyl oleate, instead of the previous 1cc). My nurse in Denver said to keep all meds the same and retest Friday. 

Thursday I went to the high risk OB area of my hospital and had my blood drawn for the nuchal translucency screening test. I knew they would be testing my beta HCG and another protein called PAPP-A (pregnancy associated plasma protein A). HCG is higher than average in trisomic pregnancies and PAPP-A is lower. 

It was a little saddening to fill out the nuchal screen blood work paperwork. Have you had a pregnancy with trisomy 21 previously? YES. Have you had other aneuploidies? YES. Monosomy X, Triploidy, Trisomy 16. I had to write down the side of the page because there wasn't enough room for all of the problems we've had. They also asked the savvy question of whether this was an IVF pregnancy and if so, what was the age of the egg at the time of retrieval. Nice. So we get to shave almost two years off of our odds. The egg was from a "young" 38 year old me, not my current "young" 40-year-old self.

I was shocked when the the nurse said the nuchal blood work would only require a finger stick (really? Why all these previous vials of blood to test my HCG then??). They pricked my finger, which proceeded to gush like a fountain, making it quite easy for the nurse to fill her row of paper blot circles with my blood. What can I say, I'm on lovenox. I'm a champion bleeder. We got the job done, and then some.

Which brings us to today....Friday....and another progesterone and estrogen check. Results coming later today. I will add them here when they come in. Hoping the progesterone hasn't dropped any lower. The estrogen seems to be hanging in strong, even rising a little bit, which makes me smile.

Thank goodness I work at a hospital. If I had to commute to get this done this many times, I would have an awful lot of explaining to do at work. As it is, I can duck out quickly and am not even missed. Job perks I didn't think of when hired.

Next ultrasound live baby check is Monday. And then...if the baby is still alive, the nuchal ultrasound is scheduled for Thursday. Feels like an important milestone. Not sure why. 

I sent my mom, who lives across the country, a framed ultrasound picture this week that should arrive tomorrow and knock her over with surprise. She doesn't know we even did the FET. We will be telling Will's sister in person on Easter morning. That's it for family telling for a while - we'll tell our other siblings, and my dad, later. These are all of the "most intimate" people. Our moms, his sister. We've always told them every time we're cycling, so keeping things mum this long has been very different. 

Wow. Really hard to believe time is still passing and that as far as I know, we are still pregnant. How lucky am I? Pretty damn lucky. Unbelievable, really.

Mo

  

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