Thursday, July 21, 2011

Perfect Percentage

Week 4 Day 3

537! The specialist says that is a great increase.
Because too high of an increase can also mean a molar pregnancy (even though for me, the last one was too low of one), I was still a bit concerned since it had more than doubled.
When I got home, I did some math to see that Jamin's percentage increase was in comparison to Caribou's and it turns out they were almost identical. I have no idea if this has any scientific bearing or not, but it is a huge comfort to me, so I am going to go with it! :)

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

So far so good

Week 4 Day 1

I called the specialists office yesterday morning to get a blood test. The said they sent the order to my lab and I went over right after work to get it drawn. However, the lab could not find the order and since it was after 5, the doctors office was already closed for the day. So, I called again this morning and the re-sent it. This time I called the lab to confirm that they indeed had the order and went over. The results - 213, a respectable number for being 4 weeks pregnant. I will go back in two days to see how much it has doubled, which will give a much better picture of how excited we should get.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Sunday Morning Surprise

3 Weeks 6 Days


This was our first cycle under treatment with the fertility specialist.

Here is a background to get everyone up to speed, if you already know, you can skip this part:
Last May (2010)  we were surprised to be pregnant on our own (Jamin took two rounds of clomid). My HCG was not doubling however and the doctor was concerned. It turns out it was a Complete Molar Pregnancy. On July 3, 2010 I had a D & C to have it removed and began the wait to make sure my HCG would go down. I did some homework and convinced my doctor to let us try again sooner than the prescribed 6 months. She wanted me to go right on Clomid (still not sure why). So we did for November, December and January with no luck. I read that Clomid can have negative effects on your estrogen levels (and thus inhibit implantation), so I requested a few months off. February, March and April, still nothing. In May the doctor upped my dose to 100mg of Clomid with still no more luck. She wanted me to do 2 more months and when I asked what would be next she said "maybe a specialist". By this time, I was getting frustrated with taking Clomid without monitoring, so I called the specialist myself.
Since Jamin's placenta had not delivered, I had to have a D &C after that as well, so the specialist was concerned about uterine scaring. He ordered a test for that and suggested I go back down to the lowest Clomid dose. The test came back that I had no scaring. They did an ultrasound around day 11 that showed that my lining was indeed thin and started me on estrogen. They also started me on progesterone (for good measure?).

Back to this cycle.
Because of all the drugs I am on, they suggested I take a pregnancy test around when I would expect AF (I don't usually like to take them too early to avoid the risk of getting my hopes up if it was a really early miscarriage). That would be tomorrow, but since I wanted to avoid dealing with disappointment right before I had to go into work, I decided to take one this morning. I got out the last of my lucky pregnancy test sticks (I have never gotten a negative with this pack, first with Jamin, then the molar). It took awhile to come up and then I was SHOCKED with the "not" did not show up before the "pregnant". I had 2 other tests, 1 was from a cheap walmart brand of OPKs and it came up negative (probably my HCG just was not high enough for that test yet or it could be that it is as useless as the OPK's it came with). The second was a name brand that came with another pack of OPK's I had. It was positive. We are trying hard not get our hopes up but also to enjoy the moment. Even with all the heartbreak the molar pregnancy caused, I still look back at the early days fondly.