Today my husband and I took an impromptu trip to Oxford, just to escape our worries for a few hours. We took lots of photos as we strolled around the city. I didn't stop thinking about what might be going on inside me but it was a lovely few hours. I did realise, whilst wandering along a cobbled street, that I have done nothing for ICLW this month. This isn't good and I will attempt to rectify my error with gargoyles.
Two and a half weeks ago a doctor placed two perfect embryos into my well prepared uterus. The whole experience was spellbinding and I held out for a staggering six days before I buckled and took a pregnancy test.
Two perfect pink lines popped up. Shocked, I don't know why getting pregnant via IVF is shocking but it is, my husband and I celebrated.
Things started to go a bit wobbly when I couldn't stop myself from peeing on the dreaded sticks.
The blasted things refused to go darker or to stop fading in and out.
I wished, hoped and prayed. It didn't help; the darn tests refused to comply. I succumbed to the fear and begged my GP for a blood test.
The result, from a blood sample taken at 13dp5dt, was 81mIU/mL. The doctor said this was low and ordered a second test.
I duly submitted my arm to the phlebotomist fifteen days after our exquisite embryos had entered my uterus.
There was 130mIU/mL of hCG in my blood at 18dp5dt 15dp5dt. This is low, low, low. My GP warned of an ectopic pregnancy and instructed me to call my clinic. My clinic confirmed fears of an ectopic pregnancy, told me what to watch out for and said the hCG was low and slow.
My husband went on an internet rampage and found a chart that we hoped would comfort us.
If you look closely you can see our first blood test just scraped into the minimum acceptable level. However, our second blood test result has fallen off the bottom of the bloomin' scale. The doubling time for my hCG hormone level is 75 hours. Not great. Ideally the hormone should double every 48 hours but anything faster than 72 hours is considered okay.
Recently my husband and I have been doing a lot of this:
It could still all be fine and dandy but it isn't looking likely. So we are still doing this:
Just a quick update. There are no pictures today or silliness about chocolate lollipops.
My beta has gone from 81 on 13dp5dt (18dpo) to 130 on 15dp5dt (20dpo). Those measurements were
over 52 hours apart. My clinic isn’t too hopeful; the lovely people who help me there have gone from being chirpy to gloomy. The clinic and my GP suspect that I might be
in possession of an ectopic pregnancy. Quite handily, they have given me a list of warning signs which, if any of them happen, should send me galloping on over to my local hospital. I will have
another beta on Monday and, if I make it, a scan next Friday. There is a small
chance that this pregnancy will work out but you'd really need a high powered microscope to see it now. I am
clinging on to that small shred of hope. I want to keep my diamond, dammit.
It was supposed to reassure me and make it all crystal clear. A blood test would tell me if this was going to be okay. However, the universe looked at my plans, took a deep breath and laughed in my face. A huge great belly busting shriek of a laugh.
My blood test results are back. I am pregnant. No doubt about it. This is good, right? It's what I wanted, right? Achieving pregnancy is the first step on the winding, probably uphill, road to reach this:
My beta-hCG result is 81 mIU/mL at 13dp5dt (or 18 days past ovulation).
That is not a sparkly, glittery or exhilarating number. That, my friends, is a number that is an excruciatingly low, frighteningly poor number. It is the type of number that could mean this pregnancy is going nowhere fast. My GP was kind but not thoughtful; beginning the conversation by asking if I was bleeding wasn't going to make me feel at ease or anticipate good news. In fact, it was blanket hiding time again.
How did I react to this agonising news? I scoffed my way through a bag of chocolate lollipops, a chocolate bar and a coffee, and not the decaff stuff either. I know, I know, I am wild and reckless. However, that was only stage one of post-beta meltdown.
Stage two involved trawling the internet, until my bum went numb, searching for success stories. As the pages loaded in front of me, the steaming pile of crap got higher and higher. I waded through the mountain of misery, reading about loss after loss, miscarriage after miscarriage, and then, I saw it, just poking out of the top of the mountain of soggy, stinking dung: a diamond. My eyes focused on the gleaming words. It happened, it was real. Someone out there had the same dismal number as me and won. For a while, all I could see was the sparkling gem of hope. Now, I can still see the shit but I am holding tightly onto my nugget of faith.
Stage three comprised of flicking through the maternity wardrobe of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Not literally, obviously, but courtesy of Go Fug Yourself. I don't know why I choose to punch myself in the gut quite so hard. I felt better when I remembered that she had married into the royal family and all the beautiful bump flattering clothes in the world can't make up for that.
So what have I learnt today:
- I'm pregnant but
probably possibly won't stay that way
- Sometimes people beat the odds
- Eating chocolate on sticks is highly enjoyable
- Kate Middleton is a beautiful pregnant lady
- I'm not feeling creative and am resorting to recycling pictures
I had another blood test today and, hopefully, I will get the results tomorrow.
I thought I would leave you all with a very special treat:
Source
Every 28 days, always around this time in my monthly cycle, my hope gene starts working overtime. Yes I do have a very regular cycle, thank you for noticing. In case you are unaware, I can tell you that the hope gene encodes the hope protein which, in turn, triggers the hope activatory pathway. Even though many doctors have told me I almost certainly won't get pregnant, the hope gene has not been switched off and it certainly hasn't resulted in, what I'd really love, hope protein down regulation. Which, in an ideal world, would bypass the hope activatory pathway altogether.
Nine days ago an egg, or ovum if you want to be all fancy about it, left one of my ovaries, travelled down a fallopian tube (I'm betting it was my right one) and, whilst on its journey, may or may not have met up with one or more of my husband's sperm. What we can be pretty sure about is that, if they did meet, the big egg and the little sperm almost certainly didn't hit it off. I don't know who's got the issue and, if I could, I would get them together in a room or, as my embryologist does, a petri dish and force them to be friends or, better still, lovers.
And now, one week and two days after the magical release, I can't stop thinking "could I be pregnant?", even though deep down inside I know I'm not. This treadmill of hope and despair has continued now, with a brief interlude for an ill-fated pregnancy, for two years and seven months. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I sit on my toilet seat and watch transfixed, with tears in my eyes, as the blood red spots fall onto the soft white paper. But every single flaming time I pick myself up and I get over it. I promise myself that when it happens again, which it inevitably does, I will be stronger, better, harder, tougher. Blow it, I say to myself, next month I am going to be the Jane Eyre of infertility - there may be a crazy lady in the annex but it ain't going to phase me - until, of course, it does.
Last month I promised myself that, when I finally yield to the call of the little white siren hiding in the bathroom cabinet, I wouldn't dream of two perfect pink lines popping up instead of the usual lone crusader. I don't want to fantasise about a pregnancy that never happens, even if it is for just five minutes. But here I am dreaming on my sofa once again and, even as I am typing these words, my internal voice is whispering "this time you really might be". And of course it's right, I might be - except I know I'm not. So I could be pregnant. I could, I really could.
Little Pill, as you sit on the table in front of me, I look at you and wonder. I examine your size, your shape, your texture. I marvel at your neatness; how compact you seem lying here before me. I take you in my hand and let you sit there for a while. I want to know more about who you are: what might you do to me? So I search; I am rewarded with new knowledge about your structure, your function and I laugh at your unpronounceable name.
Little Pill, if I swallow, will I become Alice? Will I fall down the rabbit hole? Will you come with me through Wonderland? And, Little Pill, is there a chance I could awaken to a brilliant new reality? Can you make my dreams come true? Or, Little Pill, will I be trapped here, still in this never-ending infertile nightmare?
So Little Pill, as you can see, I am nervous and fearful. We have been here before, you and I. Can I take this leap of faith? If the worst comes to pass, will my heart be strong enough to bear the pain? My soul longs for what's on offer: for the promise of a different life. But I have seen the underworld; I have taken a walk through Hades. I look at you once more, Little Pill. You sit still, motionless, ready.
