Beta Blast

I got my 2nd beta back today. It went from 117 to 581 in 3 days. As someone else pointed out to me, that means it’s doubling about every 31 hours. Cork and I are both beaming today. Neither of us could really celebrate until we heard the numbers. I know we still have a long haul in front of us before we’re past the first trimester, but getting those results feels amazing! I’ll go in again next Monday to have another check, but I doubt I’ll be quite as nervous.

After I told Cork, I immediately called my sister to let her know. She’s been as anxious as us to hear the results. She’s funny though. She’s had 2 kids, but knows nothing about getting pregnant. She got pregnant with her first child the first month she tried and the second child was a surprise. She stopped breastfeeding baby #1 and got pregnant with baby #2 without getting a period. I wish it had been that easy for me. I really would feel ok if I wasn’t grossly familiar with my cervix and it’s mucus.

I want to call my mom and dad so bad, it’s driving me nuts. They’ll be in town tomorrow to watch my sister’s kids. I figure it won’t hurt me to wait another 24 hours to tell them in person instead of over the phone.

Bundle of...Nerves

I had my second blood draw this morning and I’m a ball of nerves. I know there is nothing I can do to help my hcg rise. This will either be a healthy pregnancy or it won’t. That doesn’t mean I won’t worry about it.

I’m supposed to be working, but I can’t concentrate. I decided to run reports, which I usually don’t do during the work day as it ties up my laptop from using most other applications. I’m only running the reports now so I can waste time doing other things (like write this) to keep my mind from wandering to places it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t help that most of the people I work with are on vacation this week, so it’s super quiet.

I told my sister and BIL last night. I picked her up from the airport and couldn’t not tell her. It was so much fun to see her reaction. I honestly think she was more excited than Cork and me. We’ve both been through so much over the past two years, it’s hard to let ourselves be excited yet. I think we’ll both start getting excited if today’s numbers come back ok. I’m sure it won’t feel real and we won’t relax until we’ve heard a heartbeat. Right now we’re just hopeful and praying that we have a healthy pregnancy.

Seriously?

I call myself the anti-tester. In the 21 months since we started ttc, I’ve only tested a few times. My LP was usually short and my temps would take an early dive. When that happened, there was no need to spend money on a test. I rarely have HPTs in the house, but this week I happened to have one that’s been sitting around for months.

I tested at about 5:00 am on Dec, 26. We were going to an ugly Christmas sweater party that night and I wanted to make sure I could drink. I suspected I might be pregnant because I had a nice fallback rise chart that looked completely different from any other chart I’ve had before. I also had very sore breasts and was tired. I blamed the tiredness on my recent workouts and progesterone. I’ve bumped up my workouts recently to lose the few pounds I gained while on Clomid. I was also having a lot of fun racing the guys I swim with. I missed working out so hard that I’d max out my muscles. It felt great to be doing that again. We got over 3 feet of snow in December and I blamed my sore breasts on all the shoveling I did. We don’t own a snow blower. Cork wants one, but I secretly enjoy the workout shoveling gives me.

I didn’t turn the main bathroom light on when I tested, just the shower light. I could see the second line on the test within a few seconds, even without the light on. Of course I didn’t believe it, so I turned the main light on. I went back to bed without telling Cork. We were both supposed to be on vacation that day, but his boss was being difficult and told him last week that he had to come in. I didn’t sleep well after I had tested. I finally got up around 6:30 and headed for the gym. I worked out and called my docs office as soon as it opened. She had me come in for a urine test and then a blood draw to check hcg and progesterone. My urine test didn’t come back very dark. My doc wasn’t convinced I was pregnant, but sent me for the blood test anyway. I should have told her that I’d downed a ton of water after my workout and that I’d Od on CD21, so I was only 14DPO instead of 21 like she seemed to be assuming.

I was going to wait to tell Cork until I got my hcg levels back, but I couldn’t. He left work at noon since his boss wasn’t there and it was completely dead. I hate cutesy baby clothes. The type with cartoon dogs, or pooh, or anything else that makes a child look ridiculous. I went to a store and bought a poka dot pajama bag and a onesy with a reindeer on it. The onesy is the type I don’t normally like, but it was a Christmas onesy and if this beans ticks, it’ll be able to wear it next Christmas. As soon as Cork got home, I had him open a present that had the those two things and the hpt in it. He was so excited, but he knows how excited we both got last time to be disappointed a few days later.

My doc called with my hcg and progesterone levels a few hours later. My hcg was 117 at 14 DPO and my progesterone was 31. While I feel very comfortable with both of those, I’m still worried what Monday’s results will show. My doc wants me to continue supplementing progesterone, which I’m more than happy to do.

We went to our party on Friday night and I got through the whole night without anyone asking why I wasn’t drinking. I did have a few sips of beer because the host makes his own beer and it was amazing stuff. I kept my plastic cup full of sparkling water most of the night and our friends assumed I was drinking mixed drinks. Someone had brought a jug of home made alcohol. They didn’t pass that around until about midnight. I easily got out of doing shots by saying we were headed home soon and that I was driving.

We haven’t told our families yet. I’ll see my sister tonight and will probably tell her then. We’ll see my parents on Wednesday or Thursday and Cork’s parents and sister on Saturday. As long as my hcg levels seem good, we’ll tell all of them when we see them. That’ll be the only people we tell until I’m further along. They all deserve to know since they’ve been so supportive over the last 2 years.

I Am Now PIN 583728201729830

I drove my sister and her family to the airport tonight. My niece was adorable and kept saying that she wanted me to come with. As they were going to Boston and Cape Cod, I would have loved to go with. They aren’t escaping the cold, but they should have a lot of fun while they’re there.

I needed the little pick me up I get from being around my niece. I had a bad day today trying to sort out the mess my company likes to call benefits. We have HR people, but there’s probably one per every thousand or two employees. I couldn’t tell you my current HR person’s name if I had to. I spent hours on the phone and online after a benefits helpdesk type person told me that there are no fertility specialists covered in my state. This is after I spent hours making sure my doctor was covered before signing up for the new program. At the end of my wasted work time, I figured out that no one could give me a straight answer until after the first of the year since I’m not officially in the program yet and my company is changing a few things.

From what I could gather, it looks like I may have to switch doctors. I am so pissed off about that. My current doctor is amazing and I feel like a person when I go into her office. I really enjoy talking with her and know that nurses around town really respect her. There are two offices I can pick to go to. Both seem like the typical corporate type office. I may be wrong, but I feel like I’ll be a patient identification number and a stat at those offices and not a person like I am to my doctor. I may have to change my name to PIN 583728201729830.

Acronym Schmacronym and other Random Ramblings

I live in a world of acronyms and abbreviations. All day long at work I hear people talking about GON, EOM, ERP, HCI, ST, HCIT, SC, IIS, DI, …I think you get the picture. It’s like a foreign language and we even have an online dictionary to help people learn what all the acronyms and abbreviations stand for. I try not to use any of these outside of work.

I’ve added a whole slew of other acronyms to my written vocabulary over the last two years. I try to not use these when talking to anyone about TTC, especially people at work. My new acronyms include, but are not limited to TTC, O, AF, LP, MA, MFI, DPO, DH, H&H, BBT, EWCM, IUI, IVF, FET, HSG, HCG...

I never thought it would take more than a year to get pregnant. I also didn’t think I’d be home schooling myself. I’ve read more books about TTC than I ever wanted to. I’m more familiar with my cervix’s ups and downs than any sane person should be. I could write my own book if I wanted to.

I can do anything. Be anything…Except pregnant. I know we aren’t pregnant this cycle since we didn’t do any MA, but that doesn’t help ease the tension of the New Year. It’s not the holidays themselves that are the problem. My issue is trying to keep my mind off the thought that we’ve been at this for almost 2 years. Ringing in 2009 without a child and without being pregnant doesn’t sound like much fun when I’ve been ttc since early 2007. Last year I was calling my OBGYN at this time because I knew something was wrong and I didn’t want to go much longer without MA. Now I’ve wasted 2 month “recovering” from a miscarriage that a nurse told me was “probably non-viable from the start anyway” as if I shouldn’t be upset about it. I’ve wasted 5 months on clomid. I’ve wasted 3 months sitting around waiting for MA again and I’m about to go into a fourth. I feel like the past years were a waste. I wish there was a way to tell someone is infertile before going through years of not getting pregnant.

Emmer Effer! That Hurt!!

I had my two-week surgical follow up visit yesterday. I had a long stitch hanging out of my belly button. I had trimmed it earlier this week as it was pretty long, but my doc decided it needed to go. She had me lay back on her table (fully clothed for once) and pulled it right out. I was pointing my toes in anticipation of it hurting, as I often do in the hygienist’s chair when my lower teeth are being scraped. The tugging didn’t hurt at all, so I quickly relaxed and my toes went back to a more normal position.

I shouldn’t have let my toes let down their guard so quickly. It was time for a cleaning. I’ve been gently pulling scabs off as they loosen up and cleaning two to three times a day with hydrogen peroxide. My good doc plunged a wooden handled q-tip into a bottle of hp and then proceeded to poke and prod me with it for what seemed like an eternity. My toes are still sore today from pointing so hard. My old swim coaches would be proud at how flexible my ankles still are.

When the doc finished, she asked if I wanted a band-aid. Of course I didn’t want a band-aid. What would I need that for? I looked down and realized my belly button was now bleeding. The parts that weren’t bleeding were all bright red and icky. My belly button still looks a bit like Rudolph’s nose. On the flip side, my other two incisions look amazing.

Giving It A Go

This is my first blog and I hope that it doesn’t turn out to be incredibly dry and boring. I don’t think I would call it a place to vent about infertility as much as a place to get my thoughts out. I’m not sure who I’ll share this with yet or how many of my actual thoughts will go into it. I may have to mark this place as containing adult content if I start typing away with all the things I think about.