Beta Doubled!

I just spoke to the nurse and the beta doubled! Those might be the sweetest words ever. The first one on Tuesday was 656 so we were looking for 1300 or so and it was over 1400 (I was too excited to remember the other two numbers!). Progesterone was 18.7 which from some quick goo.gling, looks normal for an unassisted conception. The doc's office are all acting like, "well this happens every day" but man I am freaking out. I feel like I should be doing something. But I know there isn't much else to do until sometime late next week or early the next. The nurse (who will obviously need a name) said she'd have someone call back to schedule my intake appointment.

It is all so foreign to me. Not just being pregnant. But being treated like a normal person. I am not sure I like it. Though I can't really think up a reason to bitch for more -- we conceived on our own, all signs seem fine, numbers are good. Sore boobs, but nothing else. Is this the part where I just have to sit back and wait???

Thank you for all the support and well wishes. I really appreciate them.

UPDATED: I'll be going in for an u/s sometime next week (once they get an opening spot on the calendar) and my 8w and 12w appointments (WHAT????) were scheduled. Seems very presumptuous to me.

My Story

Mel asked us to tell our stories this week, and while I’m a little late, I just can’t say no to Mel. I outlined the story a few months ago, but will give the cliffnotes version now.

Eleven years ago in July, my bus stop on Wisconsin Ave in Georgetown was on a street corner outside the baby.Gap. In the window for most of the summer were 2 dozen tiny little baby shoes. Everyday I admired them until one day I saw them and cried all the way home. I wanted a child then, even though it had no place in my crazy life.

Five years after that summer when I decided I needed to be a mother, my now-husband and I decided after six weeks of dating that we wanted to get married and have children. We married in October 2003 and waited a year before TTC. I was so anxious to conceive that we used charting and OPKs from the get-go, hoping to get to parenthood quickly. It didn’t pan out and we were at the REs by October 2005. My insurance gave us 50% coverage for infertility testing and IUIs but nothing for IVF, which we hoped we wouldn’t need. We did the standard testing and were declared healthy. Even though nothing was amiss we did several rounds of clomid with IUI, experiencing one disappointing chemical pregnancy along the way.

A year later, IUIs still hadn’t worked and we were told we needed IVF, which we couldn’t afford and for which we had no insurance coverage. So we took a break, hoping we could find a way to finance our hopes of having a baby. But the months passed and no quick fix emerged. And every time I thought of financing a failed cycle, only to have to shell out money we didn’t have every month for the next five years to pay the bills, I got sick to my stomach, so we kept waiting.

In August my insurance changed and it now covers a portion of IVF. To get that coverage I had to change to a more expensive insurance plan, and leave all my beloved doctors behind, including one who has skillfully managed a chronic condition for five years. I know I’m lucky to have some coverage at all, but infertility has been more stressful than it needed to be because I don’t live in a state that mandates coverage for IVF.

***
I spoke to my doc today and she helped calm me down. She also was great about changing a few of the meds I take to manage my chronic conditions to once that should be safer and hopefully will work just as well. I should have beta and progesterone results by noon PT.

Beta was 656

And I'm terrified. I haven't been taking my PNV as regularly as I should have. I was given Me.tho.trexate in September (on the 13) to end the previous, lingering pregnancy and now I'm terrified I shouldn't have conceived so quickly. And I'm not feeling great -- my abdomen has been painful and hard for days now which has me worried. I have ulcerative colitis and I know it could just be that acting up (which wouldn't be fun but I know what to do to manage it).

Help me think good thoughts, please. :) I've never had a beta this high and that has to be encouraging, right? I'll repeat it tomorrow, plus add in a progesterone test for good measure.

This is totally scary.

Pregnant. Again? Still? Confused.

I've been feeling weird the last few days and had some weird adominal cramps so I took an OPK this morning, thinking it might be ovulation cramping (which i used to get all the time). It was crazy dark positive. Which made me suspicous. So I took a pregnancy test. And it was positive.

I didn't believe it (umm, it might have been expired since it was from our first chemical in 2006). So I begged a nurse in my Ob's office (who was out today) for a beta, which I took tonight (will get results tomorrow). She also asked for another on Thursday (thank goodness!).

I waited to tell DH until I took another test (a new one). It was positive. Speedy and dark, just like I dreamed it would be.

So this could be one of two things I think:
1. weird lingering hormones from my September miscarriage (I think I hit zero on 10/5)
2. a very early pregnancy

Any insight from my fellow stirrup queens? I've heard rumors on the internets that one is more fertile after a miscarriage. Any truth to it?

I'm hoping to see my OB tomorrow to figure out what is going on and get my results.

DH and I decided to be cautiously optimistic. What else is there to do? I didn't think lightening could strike twice. And I'm really really hoping this one sticks around for a good long time.

Making Progress

Sorry I can’t seem to get it together to post more often. I have a million things racing around my head, and I often think, oh I should post that. And then life gets in the way.

I had a wacky weekend.

A dear friend, a woman from a local message board, and a fellow stirrup queen, adopted a baby girl last week. Her and her husband had been through several wrenching years of…crap. Some hope, though always followed by loss, way too much loss for two sweet people. For anyone. They started the domestic, private adoption process this summer and their baby girl was born last week. They are home settling in, happy as can be. Mutal friends decided to put a care package together for them and it sounded like the perfect opportunity for me to get back to my sewing machine. So I spent Saturday personalizing two little itty bitty onsies and making up a simple, coordinated fleece outfit – pants and little jacket. My dear sweet hubby was practically in tears looking at the tiny soft goodness.

Saturday afternoon we got a call from hubby’s parents asking oh so innocently if we wanted to have dinner with them. They live 400 miles away and were “in the neighborhood” (really over 100 miles away) for a family funeral on Saturday, and we were expecting to host them on Sunday at our house for an overnight visit (yes on a work night). Instead, they had driven over the mountains and through the woods to have dinner with us. They didn’t call until they were already halfway to our house. There was no way to say no since we rarely get to see them. So we went to a funky Chinese place for dinner and then they turned around and drove 100 miles back to their hotel to sleep. They were back at our house by noon on Sunday.

The visit itself was nice. It is always nice to see them, especially when they visit us. It means so much to my hubby for them to see our house and know that he is happy. SIL and her 2 year old were with hubby’s parents on the visit and that was challenging. He is very active and our house is not kid proof (why should it be when we don’t have kids?). Our solution was to take him to a nearby park and for the most part it worked. It wasn’t until dinner that things went a bit south (he wants to eat like a dog, stand on furniture and stay up past my bedtime). Ah, the joys of not being a child’s parent.

This week, my plan is to finally tackle and finish the baby gifts I have planned for my brother and SIL’s baby girl, due next week. A little tiny hat, knit just for her, is almost finished. Two others, knit on our trip, are too big for a baby. Next up, a few decorated onsies especially for her, and a very pink sleep sack. Then I need to tackle all the Christmas gift and decoration sewing on my to do list.

As for progress on the baby front, there is none. Still waiting for AF, have absolutely no idea when she will show. I hit zero around the week of October 5th and finally stopped spotting on October 17th. Seems like she should be here any time in the next ten days. Any ideas on when or what to expect?

Home Again

I’ve been home for a week and couldn’t decide what I wanted to say on my blog so I said nothing at all. I’m sorry, that isn’t very good blogger etiquette.

The trip. What to say about the trip? It was lovely. And just a little insane (bad laundry experience and a transit strike will do that). And I really hope it wasn’t a once in a lifetime thing. There were still so many incredible things left to see and do and taste that I can’t bear the thought that we’ll never go back.

I came home sad, as I posted in the Lushary on Monday. A little sad that the vacation was over, but more sad that I had to come back to my life. The life where I miscarried in September. The life where we’ve been trying for so damn long to have a baby. The life where my SIL is due with her oh so precious girl (after two boys) in a matter of weeks. My imperfect, slightly depressing life. A life without the promise of a much needed vacation. Our trip has been my distraction and motivation since February. It’s what I spent most of my day dreamy hours on. What now?

Anyway, the trip itself was lovely (did I already say that?) and a little bittersweet (which I’ll explain later). I have pictures to share and I know you all will forgive anything if I share pictures, right? Keep in mind when viewing that these pages were created to share the trip with our families, including DH’s family who live several hundred miles away and are two things – serious travelers and serious picture people. They have taken at least 6 trips to Europe in the 6 years we’ve been together and have the piles of photos to prove it. It was my way of being one of them.

The photos don’t quite do it all justice. We laughed a lot and smooched a lot and really enjoyed the adventure of being together in someplace different. We’re big Amazing Race fans, and have been watching it in reruns for months. We took turns narrating the trip as if we were Phil, as in “In this leg of the race, teams must exit the airport and find their way to the destination using only public transportation. Who will reach their destination first?” and a lot of “In this detour, teams must choose between two similar tasks – taking the bus or the metro to get to the Louvre.” Every time something would get a little boring or tense (such as when we were a little lost on occasion), one of us would break out the words of Phil and we’d both be cracking up.

On our last night in Paris, we celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary with a fancy dinner a few blocks from our hotel. I can’t believe four years have passed since we stood in front of all of our friends and family and tearfully pledged to spend our lives together, good or bad. Whenever I think about it now, I think about how innocent and naïve we were then. On that day we dreamed of the children who would someday come. We’d already chosen their names and often referred to them as our pretend children, Grace and Charlie. So much of what we chose to do that day revolved around the stories we wanted to tell them someday.

It’s so darn hard to watch each year pass and not know when we’ll get to meet them. We’ve been waiting all this time to be the people we thought we’d become – parents.

When we got married we agreed to wait to TTC for a year to give ourselves time to get settled before starting a family. The year passed and we were conflicted about TTC or traveling a bit. I decided the only place that I’d want to see first was Paris. As the discussion evolved, I decided that having children was more important to me than traveling the world so we started TTC as planned that winter. Years of anguish followed. Last winter I decided I’d temporarily had enough of the darkness and we took a break. The break led to a vacation, which led us to Paris. Going there was my consolation prize. Some moments were tough to enjoy knowing that if things had just gone another way, I’d be at home with my kids.

Being home means I have to decide what to do next. How long do we try on our own before going back to the RE? Now that our insurance has changed, which RE? And how much testing do we do, knowing that there is a lifetime cap of $5K staring us in the face? How am I going to cope when the new niece arrives in a few weeks? How am I going to get through the holidays, including hosting Christmas?

Fun and games as my grandmother would say.

On our way

I'm all packed up and ready to go. I've never needed a vacation more.
And I'm thrilled that I'll be sharing my first trip abroad with my dear
sweet hubby. The last few weeks have certainly sucked,* the last few
days have been surprisingly happy as we made our final preparations and
day dreamed about all we will see and do.

I'm really hopeful that my grandmother's intuition is right and that we
are pregnant again in three months. I mean come on, I'm going on
vacation, doesn't that mean I'll get pregnant? Isn't that how the
story goes?

If we can get our old laptop to do wifi in Paris, I'll post. If not,
I'll share all the details when I return.

*even after a month of bleeding, I still got a heavy period when I hit
0 last weekend.