2ww FET symptoms and pee stick comparisons

I didn't mean to scare anyone with the last post. Was trying to capture the anxiety I was feeling as I approached the official beta. Didn't mean to yank anyone's emotional chain. Thank you again for your encouragement and well wishes...I'm successfully staying in the moment so far today. Am just here, super early pregnant, enjoying this moment, hoping for the best; trying not to go to the bad places in my head. 

Life is ironic in so many ways. For instance, now that I have good beta doubling numbers from the lab yesterday and don't need visual reassurance, TODAY the line on my hpt finally looks darker!! Silly pee sticks trying to mess with my mind! (see progression below)

Pee sticks 6dpt (on far right) to 10dpt (on far left)

I warn you, this post is going to be somewhat boring, a documentation of the hpt lines and symptoms up to this point. Feel free to skip...this is just for future reference (or for other poor souls in the 2ww obsessively googling symptoms - look, I've been there!). FWIW,  here are my two week wait "symptoms" this FET...

6dpo (1dp5dt)	nothing, truly nothing
7dpo-9dpt (2dp5dt to 3dp5dt)	nothing. Maybe the slightest uterine twinge. For a moment. But only if really paying attention. And maybe not even then.
9dpo (4dp5dt)	very slight breast swelling, very slight bloating, increased heart rate
10dpo (5dp5dt)	high resting heart rate while trying to fall asleep (~95bpm), thirsty, bloated, mild L-sided pain in abdomen, mild shortness of breath
11dpo (6dp5dt)	spotting and increasing cramping after rushing around medical campus that continues even after lying down and drinking water
12dpo (7dp5dt)	insomnia, increased urinary frequency, bit of nausea using iPhone in taxi in AM?, significant cramping when walking briskly around NYC  (beta HCG comes back at 69.3)
13dpo (8dp5dt)	uterine fullness, severe "period-like" cramping while giving workshop talk, urinary frequency, "off" appetite
14dpo (9dp5dt)	nothing in AM, then as day goes on mild to moderate cramping, fatigue, L-sided pinching, occasional breast tenderness, light-headedness (beta HCG of 155)
15dpo (10dp5dt)	L-sided pinching, uterine fullness, fatigue, breast tenderness when Moxie slams herself lovingly against my chest

Per the Denver clinic's instructions, we will draw another beta hcg tomorrow at same country lab we used yesterday. Then we are headed back to the city where a private nurse is meeting us at our apartment to do IVIG infusion #2 tomorrow afternoon. Ugh. Hopefully no terrible headache this time. And hopefully it helps keep things going. We would do anything and everything to keep this pregnancy going. We are taking nothing for granted.

Mo

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FET#2: 9dp5dt: preparing for the worst

So today was finally the official beta day for the Denver clinic. And we are up in the country far north of NYC. My husband Will arranged for me to get my levels drawn here locally, and we arrived up here yesterday evening after I successfully finished hosting a training seminar in my area of expertise.

I didn't realize how nervous I was to have to give a serious talk while pregnant until yesterday as I was doing it. It was with a clinical audience. And although it was only a 90-minute talk, it felt like a fairly big deal both because it was a fair jaunt away from NYC, and because it was with the same colleague I'd been with in 2010 when I spoke at a featured symposium internationally while pregnant (and while majorly cramping) and turned out to be losing pregnancy #6. So standing up there in front of an audience pregnant again yesterday, and finding myself significantly cramping again, and toward the end feeling fluid running out of me (that I was sure was blood), well, cue major internal freak out. I had to actively tell myself to try not to panic. And because that self-talk wasn't so effective, between the cramping and the fluid-feeling, I even left and ran to the bathroom before all the folks with questions coming up to us had gotten answers following the talk (and thankfully I quickly discovered that there was no blood, only my progesterone suppository and mucous). Phew! I then parked myself on a cushy chair for the next 2.5 hours, drinking water and not budging until Will could come get me and whisk me away to the country.

Since then, and into today, I have been exceedingly nervous about the beta. My anxiety was heightened by two other things:

(1) I worried - and my Denver nurse confirmed - that having my beta drawn at a different lab might mean we would get harder-to-interpret numbers. That if the numbers weren't doubling as expected, it might be because the pregnancy were failing, or it might just be the labs' differences in calculating.

and

(2) I have been faithfully POASing (although not posting many of the results), and damn ladies, but the line has not been getting darker. It has still been a weak positive, but I can't tell a whiff of difference between the stick from 7dp5dt and 9dp5dt. I've been trying to tell myself all kinds of reasons for that, from the fact that I just don't have great visual acuity, to the fact that the hcg would still be relatively low so maybe not a noticeable difference (haven't really believed that) to the possibility that I ruined myself when I tested with an hpt when my hcg was over 12,000, and so now everything else just looks like a weak positive to me (I could get myself to mildly endorse this possibility).

So I've been steeling myself for at least a non-confidence-inspiring number, and maybe a lower number than I got previously. Basically preparing myself to have to try not to be devastated.

We've had so much practice being devastated.

Anyway...we drove 40 minutes to the closest little municipality with a community hospital, got the blood drawn stat, and then went to the local Target to pick up toys and a new dog bed for Ms. Moxie (whose old dog bed is not so cushy anymore and is stinky no matter how much we wash it at this point), and then for a scrumptious gluten-free Indian buffet lunch.

I called for the results this afternoon and the lab refused to give them to me over the phone (arrgh!!!), so I then had my "doctor" call back 15 minutes later (Will, who had written the prescription). Felt mildly deceptive about this, but I guess in this case he was the doctor on record and I needed those results!!

And...
HCG = 155!!!
Progesterone = 31.16

So a doubling time of 42.19 hours, a 123.7% increase!!

Oh my gosh, what a relief!

I don't know why my hpts are so underwhelming-looking. This hcg level is one, though that I, and Will, and the Denver clinic, are very happy with. We will be up here until Monday morning, and Denver has asked us to test again at this lab so we have as much consistency as possible with the values.

So very good news over here, despite all my continued cramping, and despite my consierable trepidations! I still have a hard time believing any of this and am taking this one moment at a time.

I am still cramping up a storm and fairly fatigued, so have spent a few hours flat on my back. My amazing husband Will is working on making us a gluten-free/egg-free pizza crust with organic goat cheese, asparagus, and basil toppings for dinner (I'm having a little tomato sauce tonight, despite my supposed "sensitivity" to it. Yum!! And Moxie is snoozing happily (oblivious to all going on her family) in her new bed from Target.

Thank you all for your many comments and thoughts and support. Trying to wrap my head - and my heart - around this good news. We are so, so grateful to be just a little bit pregnant.

Mo

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Anti-inflammatory Mo

Prior to this FET, I gave you guys a bullet-point list of all the things we did this cycle in the name of regret management...from IVIG (which I guess I need to sign up for treatment #2 of), to lovenox, to acupuncture.

Something I didn't mention because I hadn't decided what to do about it yet was diet changes.

This January, for my fortieth birthday, Will took me to a health spa in Miami Beach. We are far too plain and no frills to be spa-type people, and the whole experience was nice enough, but really surreal. One of the things I did that weekend was see a nutritionist, which I have never done before. I was completely honest with her about both my diet and about the very real practical limitations to fixing it, such as me often not making it home from the hospital until after 9pm at night. And cooking after that? Ain't going to happen. She was great and had lots of helpful tips on how to improve things, what frozen meals are healthy (think Amy's or Kashi), what snack items would be good for me and easy enough to actually have happen (like peanut butter on rice crackers, or lentil chips with hummus, or sardines with baby carrots).

One of the other things the nutritionist had me do was a bunch of blood work to look at food sensitivities. I don't have any food allergies, but she gave me a test that was supposed to see if my blood serum reacted with approximately 150 different food items. The results give you a list of foods you reacted to, with 4 being the worst reaction and 1 the most minor (0 if no reaction at all).

And lo and behold, I came up positive on over 20 food items. No 4s on anything, thankfully, but a couple of 3s (Filbert nuts - who even knows what that is?! brazil nuts, and eggs - which is a major bummer), several 2s (brewer's yeast, alfafa, oysters, tomatoes), and a bunch of 1s (including bakers yeast, lemons and limes, navy beans, yellow wax beans, cranberries, kidney beans, mushrooms, almonds, vanilla, and wheat). The nutritionist also had my blood tested for gluten sensitivity, which I tested in the intermediate range for at 27 (above 20 is positive and above 30 is moderate to strong positive). The results were mailed to me about two weeks ago.

And at first, I was like - you've got to be kidding me - I can't cut out wheat and gluten and eggs and tomatoes. What is left?! I tried to dismiss the whole thing in my mind. I've been eating these foods all my life and am not aware of any reactions whatsoever! What a bunch of hooey!

And then I thought...upcoming FET...possibly your last...regret management...remember regret management?! Ugh. So the day before the transfer, I cut all of these foods out of my diet. I have not been 100% perfect - there have been a couple of things that I started noshing on before I realized eggs were an ingredient, and I did have one rice-crust pizza that had tomato sauce on it.... But I've been probably 98% adherent. It is tough. Especially because I don't really believe in it whatsoever.

But I'm thinking that if there's anything I can do to reduce inflammation in my body, anything that might stimulate an inflammatory response that could adversely affect the pregnancy, I'm going to give it a try. At least until the pregnancy gets a little more established. Or, really, let's be honest. At least for today. Because it has been hard to eat following this, and so many of the things I like are now off the list of possibilities. And I still don't get home until 9pm many nights.

So a little crazy, I think, and probably doesn't matter. But in the spirit of wanting to have done everything in my power to give this pregnancy a chance, I am sticking with it for now. This plus the boatload of drugs I am on (aspirin, claritin, prednisone, pepcid, lovenox, vitamin D, supplemental folate, multivitamin, fish oil, progesterone, estrogen). Phew.

These are the kind of crazyish behaviors that have evolved in me after 6 failed pregnancies and 7 IVFs. I chuckle at myself, and I remain a total skeptic about much of this.

And then I dip another rice cracker in my tub of organic lemon-free hummus.

Mo

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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

************************************
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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FET #2: 6dp5dt

My husband Will found a medical office upstate that will draw my blood Saturday and again on Monday. A fairly reputable place, too. So we will go on vacation and we will get my blood drawn as scheduled. Phew!!

Symptoms continue...

• high resting heart rate last night while trying to fall asleep (~95bpm again)
• thirsty
• bloated
• left sided pain in abdomen (still doesn't really feel uterine, but I'll take it)
• mild shortness of breath

As some of you predicted, I couldn't wait until closer to the beta to test again.

I lied to myself that it wouldn't upset me if it were still ambiguous.

But fortunately....

Still very light...but definitely there...

Can you see it, too?

OMG, we are pregnant for the 7th time. Please let this be lucky number seven!

Mo

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Pee sticks are like crack

Thank you for all of your comments and thoughts. Trying to stay in the zen place...trying...it is tough to sustain, but is a good goal.

Today is 5dp5dt...(gulp)

Still here. Still clueless about what's going on inside.

In terms of "symptoms," yesterday I thought I was having some abdominal pain, but I am bloated from all the estrogen and progesterone, maybe also from the prednisone, so I thought it might have been because my pants were too snug at the waistline. Last night and this morning, though, too, I have been feeling mild intermittent lower abdominal pain. It's on the left side and is a dull, constant (when there) feeling. Not exactly a cramp at all, and not even necessarily in my uterus. I prefer this significantly to feeling nothing, but really, have no idea if it signifies anything. Also, my heart rate is fast. I had Will count it last night in bed and it was 96 bpm just lying there. Odd...also probably doesn't mean much (and again maybe could be chalked up to 5 mg prednisone bid?)

Now that today is equivalent to 10dpo, I wanted to answer the question that some of you had asked about testing ahead.

Testing ahead hasn't really been a major thought until today...but now it is on my mind.

I still have a large amount of HPTs left from the motherlode that Will brought home for me way back when. And they are set to expire this year (guess they aren't good forever). So that makes me think I should use them - wouldn't want them to go to waste, now would I?

On the other hand, I know from the one cycle where I peed daily (and ultimately didn't get pregnant), that all that POASing (can POAS be a verb?) extended and magnified the agony. So I don't want or need to be doing that. I've also read way too many stories too of people who ultimately had happy news spiral into despair by testing too early. And I definitely don't want to spiral into despair needlessly.

Last cycle, I did the POAS-and-seal-in-envelope-until-beta-day strategy (remember that?). A crazy strategy, I know, but one that allowed me to pee but save my sanity. These hospital-grade tests can in fact be read later, so then can let you know how far back you had a positive. Of course...one would think this could be calculated merely by halving the beta level and counting back by two days, repeating this until you get to 25, the level of the test...so is kind of a waste. For some reason at the time, it held some sort of logic for me...

Today, though, the thought crept in, well, why don't I just test, just to see. It's so early that if it's negative, it means nothing. Not a thing at all! Therefore, it won't mess with my psyche! I convinced myself. I won't be disappointed if I test today because it is really the first day that you could possibly test positive and many times that I've been pregnant, a 10dpo test would have been negative (not that any of those pregnancies turned out ok in the end, but you know what I mean).

So I did test this morning, fool that I am....and damn if I'm not sure of the result!!! It looks like a negative. But examined in a certain light, with my eyes squinted...I thought I saw maybe the whiff of a second line. But then I set it down and looked later and thought, nah, not really, I think that's just where the second line would be, if there was a line. Because I've looked at so many tests over the past five years that I can intuit where the second line should be. Remember, too, I'm very talented at seeing faint lines. I was able to discern a line last cycle when the beta was 23. This is no 23, I don't think...I think this is more of a hallucination. Or is it? I swear I can almost see something...

Aaaarrrrgh!

Oh, and as for the prediction that I wouldn't be disappointed? Well...I'm not disappointed, I'm...confounded! Aggravated! More anxious than I was before. I want to break the whole freaking box open and pee on all twenty tests.

Pee sticks are like crack. You have just a little taste and then you feel this enormous chasm of want open up inside of you, gimme gimme gimme!

So the answer about when I next will pee on a stick? Well, apart from today, I don't think I will test much prior to the beta. Unless my resolve breaks down again before then, which is definitely a possibility.

Oh, and I have a question I need your help on...when should I draw the freaking beta? I am due to have it drawn on Saturday (which will be 9dp5dt). But there are two problems with that - my local clinic doesn't draw betas on weekends. Also, we think we will be away in the country this weekend. I thought of getting it drawn a day ahead on Friday morning...but Friday I have to drive upstate and give a seminar to a roomful of clinicians. I don't really want to get a call from my clinic in the middle of that with good or bad news. Alternately, we may be able to find a Quest or Labcorp somewhere in the boondocks to get the HCG drawn stat on Saturday (does Quest or Labcorp offer same-day service?). Of course if we do that...we then will need the second beta drawn on President's Day (bang head on desk in frustration). When we will likely still be in the country and when I am certain no country lab will be open.

Forget testing ahead. Forget testing all together! Maybe I should just wait nine months and see if I give birth.

Have you seen my zen? I think I left it somewhere.

Mo

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Honoring the possibility

I was looking back through my old "two week wait" posts from my (gulp) six previous transfers and found this post from IVF #5, which expressed a sentiment I'd like to keep firmly in mind and wanted to share out loud as well.

It talks about trying to just stay in the now. And so, reading this, I am reminded to try to take a moment and recenter myself when I start to go straight into the crazy places in my mind.

Recentering looks something like this...

Asking myself: What do I know right now? 

Right now is about honoring possibility. 

Right now is about not trying to predict the outcome either way and instead just focusing on the three blastocysts inside of me, just now as they are, not as they babies they might become, or the failure that might ensue, but just as they are now. 

As I wrote back then in 2009, "At this moment in time, and for the coming week, I have the possibility that I might be pregnant...For this moment, at least, I am tuning in to what is true right now. I am honoring the possibility...that maybe there is life inside me."

Here's to that thought and that intention. To staying in the moment, right now, right here, 4dp5dt. This possibility, this in-between place is the only thing that is really true. 

The rest of my thoughts are just hopes and fears.

Here's to staying in the moment.

Mo 

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FET #2: 3dp5dt

Hi folks - nothing super impressive going on over here. We are currently in the Denver airport about to catch our flight back to NYC. Slight mechanical problem, so we're a bit delayed, giving me time to post.

My wonderful hubby Will took me shoe shopping yesterday (because there is nothing a good pair of new shoes can't cure or at least help with). After that, he drove us to Vail where we looked at the snow-covered mountains and beautiful skier and snowboarder people (and their dogs - so many gorgeous snow-loving dogs!). We had a lovely lunch and low-key walk around Vail Village. Made me want to go skiing. Not right now, mind you, but well, in different circumstances. Nice to see so much snow out in Denver since the Northeast has been so deficient this year.

In terms of two week wait symptoms...I wouldn't say I feel nothing. I definitely think I am maybe occasionally feeling very slight cramping. Got that? It's a definite maybe. It's awfully subtle. Trying to not drive myself crazy with this. There have been cycles in the past where I felt what I can almost term as uterine "construction" feelings going on that were very reassuring, and at least so far, that's not happening. But it's not a total dead zone down there either. The faintness of the sensations, though - and their transient nature - makes it hard to know if my perceptions are just what I would typically feel if I hyperattuned to my sensations or whether there is anything else afoot. Ah well.

At airport security, they wanted me to go through their fancy millimeter-wave body scan machine, which I didn't want to do. (No room in my already neurotic brain for any crazymaking thoughts that I somehow doomed the implantation process by exposing myself to millimeter waves!)

So I opted for the manual pat down and explosives wipe.

Which should have been no problem...

except for the small fact that I tested positive for explosives.

Yup.

So I ended up getting all my belongings checked and wiped for explosives and an errrmmmmm, more "thorough" pat down in a private room from two lovely female TSA agents.

Which thankfully I passed. Otherwise I had visions of them shutting down the entire terminal as they did...well, actually....don't know what they would have done in that case.

Not sure what set off the machine. Maybe something in my estrogen patches? Or in the ethyl oleate from the progesterone in oil? (I'm using that every other day to supplement my Endometrin suppositories.). Who knows.

I'm still hoping that maybe I will feel something more definitive in terms of implantation sensations soon. There have been times in past two week waits that I felt like a line of condos was being put up in my uterus...but then before my natural pregnancies, I never knew I was pregnant before testing at all...(or maybe had an idea a day before testing. Maybe.) So I know anything is possible. Trying to keep an open mind and not torture myself one way or another. All of your reports on what you did or didn't feel was very helpful, by the way. It doesn't completely make the crazy go away, but it reminds me that whatever I am or am not feeling, I am definitely not at game over yet. Nowhere even close.

Wait...was that something in my uterus? A slight cramp?

There it was again...possibly.

Oh wait, it's gone.

Maybe it was my imagination.

Or maybe it was just gas.

Sigh.

Mo

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