10 Weeks

Wow, double digits on the weekly counter feels good. Almost surreal . . .

Baby should be the size of a prune (about 3 centimeters long). If my doctor are going to keep the 1/24 due date then I will be moving these weekly updates to Thursday, just to be consistent with a 40 week pregnancy actually ending on 1/24. But for now, at least until the next ultrasound and appointment I'll keep them where they have been. 2 days doesn't make that big of a difference . . .

The 4 days that have passed since the ultrasound have been nice.  I haven't spent my time obsessing over whether or not the baby is still alive.  Which honestly, is the first time I can say that in this entire pregnancy.  To not have obsessive dead baby thoughts in an entire 4 day period is a HUGE mental milestone.

Of course, I'm not exactly convinced we are bringing this baby home yet either.  It's a long mental leap to imagine that 9 week embryo we saw Thursday being a healthy baby that we will bring home in 7 months.  So instead of obsessing about miscarrying OR obsessing about finding stuff to decorate a new nursery, I'm just putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to think much about pregnancy at all.  Some days that's easier than others.  I still feel fairly sick most of the time, and some days are much worse than others.  Although, my severe aversions do seem to be going away - I actually ate, and enjoyed, salad twice this weekend.  Bizarre insomnia issues are still kicking my butt.  I can struggle all day to keep my eyes open and have significant trouble going to sleep at night.  And even more trouble going back to sleep after I get up to pee in the middle of the night - which is typically happening once, but twice isn't unheard of either.

So all of that was a long winded way of saying that I *think* I feel pretty normal right now.  At least as normal as it's going to get.

NT scan is scheduled for July 12th.  I'm sure as that gets closer I will freak out more than once.  But for now, I'm trying to enjoy the little bit of sanity the ultrasound last week gave me.  :)

I love my husband, but . . .

. . . One of us is going to have to start sleeping in the guest room. He snores. A lot. Always has. What I have forgotten is how incompatible pregnancy sleep is with someone who snores loud enough to wake the dead. In a non pregnant condition, his snoring annoys me, I elbow him in the ribs, he rolls over and stops long enough for me to fall back asleep.

In a pregnant condition, his snoring annoys me, I elbow him in the ribs, he rolls over . . . But before I can fall back asleep, I realize I have to pee. Then I get back in bed and realize how queasy I feel and wonder if I'm going to throw up. And I lay there trying to suppress the nausea long enough to fall back asleep. EXCEPT, usually sometime in this 45-90 minute routine for me, he has started snoring again before I ever get back to sleep in the first place.

Crap. I am exhausted.

25mm of Perfection

There really aren't words for the anxiety leading up to the appointment today or for the collective sigh of relief my husband and I both shared just minutes into our ultrasound.

Basically everything looks perfect. Cervix is long and closed. Gestational sac looks nice and secure (no tears or signs of detachment). Yolk sac - which is still providing the nutrients - looks healthy. Tiny arm and leg buds were moving around. Brain looks to be forming appropriately. Heartbeat was steady and strong (although this particular machine does not calculate bpm). And just as important as that heartbeat - baby's growth measured exactly 2 weeks further along than our ultrasound from exactly 2 weeks ago. (He/she is currently 25mm long.) Really, could you ask for anything more???

One note about the placenta . . . It appears to be developing well, but it will be anterior. (Forming on the front side of the uterus as opposed to the back.) Medically speaking this is a complete non-issue. Unless the placenta forms over the cervix, it really doesn't matter where it is and as the uterus grows the relative position of the placenta changes. But an anterior placenta means that it may take me longer to feel the baby move as the placenta will cushion some of those early movements. And it also means that finding the baby's heartbeat on a Doppler device may be harder, particularly until the baby gets a lot bigger. In fact the tech told me that it is very likely that we won't find it at my 12 week appointment, but not to worry, they would do an ultrasound if that occurs.

So that's where we are. Breathing a bit easier tonight. Our next ultrasound will be our NT scan to occur sometime in the next 2-4 weeks (I'm hoping for more like 2). I'm sure I will freak out about that as it gets closer, but for now I'm going to try to enjoy the good news we got today, relax a bit, and get a good night sleep tonight.

Question

If I lay in this bed awake all night begging for this baby to still be alive tomorrow, does that increase the likelihood of a positive outcome?

Unfortunately I know the answer, but I still think its how I'm going to spend most of the next 8 hours. Fuck. I'm tired and just want my brain to turn off right now.

Just trying to get through . . .

I'm not sure if it's anxiety about tomorrow or if it's pregnancy hormones in overdrive, but I have been really sick in the last 24 hours. And for the first time in this pregnancy that has included a raging (almost unbearable) headache. I went to bed relatively early last night hoping that would cure it, but sure enough it's still here this morning. I try to avoid any medicine in pregnancy, but I just couldn't go without the Tylenol this morning. Of course, not being able to remember the allowed dosage for pregnancy I pulled out my old folder from my practice, and the first thing I saw was the ultrasound pictures from the last pregnancy. Dagger to the heart.

At first the sickness was giving me a lot of comfort. Now I'm just convinced it's a cruel joke. Lots of women have 1st trimester sickness and still miscarry. Why should I be any different? I don't exactly have a good track record for staying pregnant lately.

But enough of my pity party. I'm going to go spend my day trying to get some real work done, while simultaneously hanging my head over a trash can. And I'll probably cry a couple times too. I just hope the Tylenol kicks in soon. I need whatever relief I can get today.

9 Weeks

Sigh. I don't really know what to say today. If all is well, the baby should be about the size of an olive right now. But as I mentioned yesterday, I am having a hard time convincing myself that all is still well. The next 2 days are going to drag.

I found out yesterday that some things with my job are changing in the next several months. Changes that I don't know if I want to deal with assuming I will be 4-5 months pregnant at the time. One step at a time. Step 1: Find out if baby is still alive. Step 2: Worry about job.

Tick results

In what has proven to be a fairly stressful day so far, I am happy to report that the tick from last week did not carry Lyme Disease. I needed some good news today.

Feeling Really Down

I'm feeling very doom and gloom over the last 24 hours. Convinced it's all over and trying to prepare myself for that news on Thursday afternoon. Yesterday was 8w5d - the day we found out we lost the baby last time. And I just can not for the life of me fathom that there is any way this baby will still be alive on Thursday. My RE must have told me a dozen times at least that statistically *most* people will overcome RPL and go on to have successful pregnancies. I'm not feeling like the odds are in my favor, at all. I just want to curl up and cry.

Sushi

It is 10:27am and I am suddenly feeling like if I don't have some sushi I might hurt someone. (The cooked kind of course.) I have a meeting at noon so if I'm going to get some, I need to get out and do it quickly. Gah. Pregnancy is SO weird.

June 14th

Well, I think the anticipation of this day has been worse than the day itself (although it's not exactly over yet). Interestingly enough, out of 4 miscarriages, this has been my only real due date. With the first miscarriage, I was breastfeeding and we had no idea how far along I was, so there was never a due date. Guesstimate was sometime in February 2011. Then the 2 chemical pregnancies were over so quickly that I never really paid that much attention to what their EDDs were - although I'm sure I could have told you at the time. They were both sometime in March and April of 2012.

And now here we are - the due date of the 4th miscarriage. Crazy. In some ways it feels like the loss was yesterday. In some ways it feels like it was a lifetime ago. I'm not that sad today . . . in fact I'm having a hard time imagining this home being ready to have another baby in it. Of course, I'm 100% positive that's exacerbated by my ridiculous exhaustion and my constant feeling of needing to puke everywhere.

I will never know why I've lost so many pregnancies. I read stories about others with RPL and my heart breaks for them not understanding how they have the strength to get through. And yet, I'm here. Somehow getting through myself. Trying to be a good mom, a good wife, and hold it all together. And now I find myself at the last milestone of the last loss. And I'm desperately clinging to any and all shreds of hope that I don't have to spend another due date like this ever again.

I LOVE my midwives!

Today's appointment started out a little bit rough with a brand new and VERY young nurse. She didn't know what progesterone was or why a pregnant person would be on it?!?!?! She didn't know if my records had been faxed over from my RE?!?!?! And she asked me if this was my first pregnancy?!?!?! Very very clearly she had not looked at my chart at all before calling me back. Which was fine, she was super young and very nervous.

The first thing the MW did when she walked in was apologize - the nurse is actually a nurse intern for the Summer. No worries, it was just awkward.

My MW is FREAKIN wonderful. She talked me through everything she reviewed that was faxed over from the RE. She said everything looked wonderful. My last beta was 70,000 which I sort of wish I didn't know. She reassured me that doubling time is much much slower when numbers get this high.

She told me she wasn't going to give me the first appointment song and dance which I really appreciated because I have been through that way too many times now. We did talk about a few things:

1) The tick. She could not believe my luck of being bitten by a deer tick in the first trimester of pregnancy (again). When she asked if it was a deer tick and I said yes, "SHIT!" actually came flying out of her mouth. And then she apologized profusely for the unprofessional nature of that response. No apology needed. Her assessment: There is no known risk of taking Ceftin during pregnancy - it is considered "safe," and there is known benefit of starting antibiotics within 72 hours of tick removal to be extremely proactive. However, she also thinks that if we start the antibiotic in a week (we should have the tick report back by then) that we are still well ahead of the curve when it comes to treatment of possible Lyme exposure and with my history, she would not take the antibiotic without KNOWN exposure to Lyme disease. She said that's her gut instinct, and that from a strict medical standpoint either option would be okay. Her instinct matches my instinct, so I'm not taking the meds unless the tick comes back positive for Lyme.

2) Progesterone. Will stay on it until the 12th or 13th week.

3) Vaccines. I am almost positive I am behind on my DTaP vaccine and want to make sure that's in my records. Obviously we won't do that now. She said sometime well after 20 weeks would be fine.

4) Monitoring. She wasn't going to suggest it, but I'm glad I spoke up and asked. I point blank asked if we could make any argument to have an ultrasound between now and the NT scan (at 12 weeks). Without hesitation she said, "Absolutely yes! Pick a day." So on Thursday of next week we will get one more peak. I'm nervous about it already.

5) Due date. WTF? How freakin hard is it to calculate a due date??? My RE estimated 1/20/13 based on ultrasounds. Based on LMP and every single online calculator I can find I calculate 1/22/13. And my midwives' calculator comes up with 1/24/13. It doesn't matter. They are all guesses anyway. For now, in my head I'm sticking with 1/22. It's in between the 2 estimates. From my midwives' perspective, I'm happy if they want to go with 1/24/13. It buys me a couple of extra days without induction in case the baby wants to show up fashionably late.

Overall a very nice appointment. She kept telling me over and over and over again how excited and hopeful she is, and I'm so glad she really tailored the appointment to not make it a complete waste of my time today. :)

The Hook Effect

NOTE:  There is nothing important about my current pregnancy in this post.  Just me being a nerd and playing with pregnancy tests . . . 

There was an interesting discussion I remember seeing on a pregnancy forum a while back about something called "the hook effect."  Basically it's the idea that HCG can get high enough for a home pregnancy test to be negative?!?!?!  Depending on the test this can happen when HCG is anywhere from 400,000 to 1,000,000 - which is not typical in standard pregnancies but can happen with multiples or with molar pregnancies.   But once HCG starts to get up into it's peak even in a standard pregnancy, pregnancy tests can have trouble detecting HCG.  The theory is that the HCG is so concentrated that test antibodies are unable to hook to the HCG to bind it.  (Google it for the much more scientific explanation.)  Crazy, right?  How do you prove the hook effect?  Dilute the sample and retest - if the test gets darker upon dilution, then you have proven the hook effect.  I thought this was all fascinating when I read about it, but 1) wasn't pregnant to try it out and 2) and even if I was, there usually aren't just extra pregnancy tests around my house.

Then, I was cleaning out the bathroom this weekend and found a 3 pack of pregnancy tests (that I had obviously forgotten about or they would have been used a long time ago) and they were about to expire.  So I thought I'd do my own little science experiment.  The only thing that would make this more interesting would be if I knew my actual HCG levels right now.  I don't.  The last time they were reported to me they were over 36,000.  They should be well above that now.



Pretty fascinating, huh?  My undiluted urine is producing a barely positive result.  Add some water and the test line gets darker.  Add even more water and the test line gets even darker.

Like I said, nothing of true substance in this post, other than proving that I'm a nerd, but I think it's cool.  :)

Guilty pleasure

I just had my first diet coke of this pregnancy. While caffeine and artificial sweeteners are both "okay" in moderation, neither are really recommended for pregnant women. Add in my RPL psychosis and I haven't had much of either in the last 5 weeks. I don't think there is anything on Earth with less with less nutritional value than a diet coke, but I sure did enjoy it.

8 weeks

If you saw yesterday's post, the tick is off.  Not without a ridiculous amount of drama and 3 1/2 hours at an urgent care clinic because the head broke off.  I'll spare you the details, yesterday sucked.  On top of it all, I had the most incompetent doctor at the urgent care clinic who couldn't tell me what to do.  She was like, well I can give you an antibiotic, but I don't feel strongly either way if you take it or not.  Um, what? Thanks, that's clear guidance.  Obviously I'll ask my midwife about it tomorrow.  Based on "Dr. Google" it doesn't sound like I'm an appropriate candidate for proactive treatment of Lyme Disease, so if my midwife is as perplexed as this "doctor" I saw yesterday I guess I'm not going to take the meds.

Other than that, things are going along okay.  8 weeks pregnant today.  Baby should be the size of a raspberry.  Still feeling pretty gross most of the time, but it's definitely the type of sickness that's bearable.

I was cleaning out the bathroom this weekend and came across an old box of pregnancy tests about to expire.  So of course instead of throwing them away, I did a science experiment.  (Weird, I know.)  I'll try to post my results of testing out the "hook effect" sometime later this week.

Are you f*cking kidding me???

Okay, so before I start talking about how much I'm freaking out, let me say I'm not bleeding and I have no reason to think I'm miscarrying.

But OMG, I'm freaking out.

I have been bitten by a tick once since I got married 4 years ago. It was May 2009. How do I remember that so well? Because I was 9 weeks pregnant with my son. It was stressful. Lyme Disease can be very serious for pregnancy and a fetus. We had to send the tick off to be tested for all sorts of diseases (not just Lyme Disease) and after 2 weeks of waiting and $600 of tick tests not covered by insurance we learned the tick was not diseased. Phew.

Can you guess where this ridiculously random story is going next? Yes. Fuck. My. Luck.

I have a fucking tick on me right now. 2 tick bites in 4 years. Both in the first trimester of pregnancies. Someone compute the odds of that. Really.

It's tiny right now, so it hasn't been on me long. But here's more suckiness - because of where it is, I can't reach it well enough to get it off myself without worrying about tearing it and the head being stuck inside. So I have to wait . . . hours for my husband to get home and help.

I have a possibly diseased parasite sucking my pregnant blood right now, and there is NOTHING I can do about it for at least another 6 hours.

Fucking awesome. Really.

Let's talk about the next 7 days

I sit here this morning completely emotionally exhausted thinking about this upcoming week. While I'm sure many of these topics will get their own post at some point in the next week, thinking about all of them this morning is a little overwhelming.

1). This will be the first week in three weeks that we will not have an ultrasound or any other way to check to see if this peanut is still alive.

2). I will have my first appointment with my midwife who has done all of my miscarriage appointments.

3). We will (hopefully) pass the gestational age that everything went wrong last time. At 7w4d last time there was a gloriously strong heartbeat. At 8w5d it was gone.

4). And finally we will watch June 14th come and go. The EDD for our last pregnancy. And instead of becoming 2nd time parents, we will spend June 14th clinging to whatever hope we can find that we won't have to say goodbye to another pregnancy and spend another due date with such sorrow.

Quick (and boring) afternoon update

The nurse called when I couldn't get to the phone of course.  She left a very nice message confirming everything we discussed this morning with the RE.  She told me that my regular practice could decide when would be a good time to come off my progesterone.  And she did not give me my beta level.  For a split second I thought about calling back to ask what it was, and then the calmer part of my brain intervened.  I don't need the number.  Everything we saw this morning looks good.  Certainly if they were concerned about the blood work they would have mentioned it.  So I'm letting it go.  I can live without it.

A good morning

Well, all things considered, this morning was a resounding success.  Baby is measuring 7w0d (more on that in a second), and the heartbeat was a wonderful 144bpm.  We didn't just see the heartbeat today, but heard it as well, and man is that an experience like no other.  It's the first time I've heard a fetal (embryonic, whatever) heartbeat since I was pregnant with my son.  Hearing the sound of a heart of a new life beating inside you fill a silent room, it's just more incredible than words can describe.

The RE (not my normal RE) said everything looks perfect multiple times and told me that they'd call me later today with blood work results and final instructions (like how long to stay on my progesterone), but that I should go ahead and schedule an appointment with my normal practice (which I did last week based on my normal RE's recommendation).  

About that measurement.  I did have a mild cardiac event when he told me that the baby is measuring 7w0d today.  Because exactly 1 week ago the baby was measuring 6w3d and that is only 4 days of growth in the last 7 days.  I asked if there was concern about that, and his response was very reassuring.  Basically he said we are measuring a moving 3-D object about 1cm in length by zooming into my uterus on a computer screen and trying to nail down a 2-D measurement.  And at this stage every millimeter counts.  If the measurement last week was high by just 1mm and the measurement this week is low by just 1mm, then I've had perfect growth over the last week.  The sac has grown perfectly over the last 2 weeks and the heart rate has accelerated perfectly over the last week.  He said there is absolutely nothing to be concerned about.  (And then I remembered the last pregnancy where the tech couldn't get good measurements and depending on the angle and how the baby was moving she was easily getting a range of 3-4 days with each measurement she took.)  

Phew.  

So for now I wait for blood work, which should still be rising, and wait for my appointment next week with my midwives.  I may beg like a drug addict for an ultrasound between now and the NT scan at 12 weeks.  Or inquire as to whether or not a perinatologist/high-risk OB would be better suited to follow me until the pregnancy is further along.  I absolutely adore my midwife practice, but as I've said before, handling complex situations is not their specialty.  

Yo-yo

In a matter of hours I've gone from feeling okay and eating breakfast, to being the sickest that I have been yet. I am starving hungry, but have not been able to keep anything down. And I still haven't taken my vitamins today either - which should be a treat.

A part of me is very relieved. And a small part of me is reconsidering Zofran.

It's only Wednesday

Shit, it's been a long week.  In 24 hours we'll have a baby update and I'm feeling kinda sick about it.  More nervous about tomorrow than I was last week.

I've decided that the sickness I experienced between 5 1/2 and 6 1/2 weeks is just not coming back.  It's not gone completely, it's just been replaced with a more nagging type of all day manageable nausea.  The type of nausea that actually is lessened by eating smaller meals at closer together intervals and is completely tolerable.  I feel like 7 weeks is WAY too early for my sickness to have improved, but 1) there is obviously nothing I can do about it and 2) I'm trying to find some comfort in the fact that I am still sick.

With the pregnancies that I lost, I specifically said to my husband on more than one occasion - I just don't feel pregnant.  I mean I really and truly felt like my normal regular self without a period.  That is definitely not the case now.  And if I hadn't had the extreme sickness I had last week, I'd honestly be pretty happy with my symptoms right now.

But the minds games are KILLING me.  This is harder than I ever imagined it would be.  Then I remind myself that my regular practice probably won't do another ultrasound until the NT scan and that's still over 4 weeks away . . . and then the anxiety really sets in.  I am going to try to convince them that I might die if I have to wait 4 weeks for another ultrasound.

What we hope to see tomorrow:

1) An embryo that has grown appropriately in the last week.  They are measuring millimeters in my uterus through a transvaginal ultrasound, and each millimeter makes the difference in each gestational day here . . . so if you give a small fudge factor for measuring inconsistencies, the embryo doesn't have to measure EXACTLY 7w3d tomorrow (it measured 6w3d last week), but it should be darn close.

2) A heartbeat with a rate that has accelerated.  The heart technically starts beating sometime early in the 5th week (although much too small to be detected via ultrasound) and starts out beating around 80bpm.  The fetal heart rate should increase by approximately 3bpm per day up until sometime around the 9th week, when it will stabilize and then slow down a bit for the remainder of pregnancy.  These are all approximate guidelines and timeframes, so there is no magical number we are shooting for, but faster than 121bpm is certainly what we are hoping for tomorrow.

3) HCG that has increased.  As I mentioned last week, doubling times once betas get this high can really slow down a lot and bloodwork is not the best indicator of pregnancy outcome at this point.  But my HCG should still be increasing and not by an insignificant amount.  Just like the heartbeat, there is no magic number here, but higher is better.

Afternoon Update

I feel like complete and total shit again and I can't think of a better update.  I absolutely hate that this has to be a war between physical and mental well being, but for now the worse I feel physically the better I feel mentally.

Glad I caught up on my work yesterday when I was feeling better . . .

7 weeks

7 weeks pregnant today.  If all is still going well, the baby should be about the size of a blueberry.

Up until yesterday I was fairly optimistic about this pregnancy, but my relatively good day yesterday really played some head games with me.  I wouldn't say that I felt great or normal yesterday, but I tolerated a fair amount of food and didn't even feel the need to keep a plastic bag with me at all times.  Jury is still out on how I feel today.  I've only been awake for about 30 minutes and don't feel great, but that's a pretty typical morning for me, pregnant or not.  (I'm slow and grumpy to wake up.)

Of course, to mess with my head even more, I had my first dream last night about miscarrying this pregnancy.  In between the last miscarriage and this pregnancy, I had miscarriage dreams quite frequently, but somehow my mind had kept them at bay during this pregnancy . . . until now.  I'll save you the gory details, but it was horrifying and upsetting and did nothing to calm my nerves.

Thursday morning feels a million hours a way.  Still 2 full more days to analyze why I'm feeling better and to hope I start feeling worse again really soon. I am so glad my RE is bringing me back for another ultrasound and I am so glad my husband is going to be able to go with me.  I feel like this one may not have the same happy outcome as previous ones.

Life/Pregnancy with RPL

This weekend was a pretty rough one physically for me.  I hugged the toilet multiple times and last night after fixing dinner for my family I went and laid down on our bed and cried my eyes out for about 15 minutes.  Too sick to do anything other than cry.  (My mom was in town, or I wouldn't have even bothered making dinner.)  I finally was able to pull myself together and eat a few bites of the meal.  Evenings are much worse for me than mornings.  Every night I lay in bed and convince myself that if I just mentally suppress the nausea for long enough, I'll be able to finally fall asleep.  This has been taking me over an hour or two at night to get to sleep.

So when the alarm went off this morning, the very first thing I thought was, "Hmmm.  I didn't get up to pee last night."  As I step out of bed to go to the bathroom the second thing I think, "WTF?  My boobs don't feel like they were punched in my sleep."  And as I slowly wake up this morning and try to get into the Monday morning groove, I am obsessed with one nagging and constant thought, "I don't feel sick yet today."

And those three things in combination are making me completely fucking neurotic right now.  I am going to try the absolute best I can to take advantage of feeling good to get some real work done this morning.  I was so sick last week that for hours on end I would just stare at my computer trying to get through the day.  I fell behind on some stuff that is going to bite me in the rear if I don't catch up on it asap.  So wish me luck that after spending a few hours on work that I will be hugging the toilet again.  Because if my sickness doesn't come back really really soon then I'm going to probably lose my mind.

Zofran? No thank you!

My RE told me yesterday I should go ahead and schedule my first appointment with my regular doctors, even though she's going to follow me for one more week.

So I called my practice this morning and as soon as I identified myself and said I was pregnant the receptionist was so excited. "Oh, we are so happy to hear this. We've been pulling for you." Which was very sweet, but also made me feel a little like the office sympathy case. Whatever, it was mostly sweet. She went on to ask me several questions about how I was feeling, if I was feeling different, etc. I told her I was really sick. Not to the point where I am concerned about nutrition or hydration. Just to the point that I carry a plastic bag with me everywhere because the feeling is that it's going to happen any (and every) second. Being the super sweet sympathetic person that she is, she said, "Oh, let me put you through to a nurse. I'm sure we can get a script of Zofran called in for you." And in my head I said, "Are you fucking insane??? I am not doing one thing to take away any of these pregnancy symptoms. They are the only thing keeping me from being committed to a padded room." And somehow between my head and my mouth that turned into, "That's really nice of you to offer, but it's giving me some peace of mind right now, so I'm going to pass."

I'm not going to lie - I had forgotten how miserable the first trimester was with my son. Feeling miserable is never fun . . . But it is damn sure providing me some mental comfort right now. And if I have to choose between physical ailments that are of no true health concern or sanity, I'll gladly carry my plastic bag with me every day for the next 33.5 weeks!

First appointment with my regular doctors is June 13th. It will be emotional - there are quite a few doctors there (5 or 6) and the one I'm seeing is the one who diagnosed and tracked both my previous miscarriages.

Small update (with small freak out)

The nurse called me back with my bloodwork yesterday afternoon.  Beta is up to 36,818.  Cue minor freak out.  Based on facts, that is fine.  FACT:  Once betas are over 6,000 it is completely normal for them to take over 96 hours to double.  FACT:  Once betas are over 6,000 and an embryo is present, transvaginal ultrasound is considered the more appropriate way to track the viability of a pregnancy as there can be WILD variations in beta levels.  FACT: For 6 weeks since LMP, the standard range of normal is anywhere from 1,080 to 56,500, and I'm obviously much closer to the higher end of that spectrum.

In my brain, it's not fine.  My betas went from doubling every 44 hours to doubling every 95 hours and that seems like a MASSIVE slow down.  I'm trying not to let the crazy in me run away with this.  Many doctors even stop drawing betas once they detect an embryo on an ultrasound (some stop even sooner).  Unfortunately my RE practice does not stop.  In fact, when I go back next week for what will hopefully be my last visit, they are going to draw one again.  ARGH.  Why?  Just to give me something else to worry about I suppose.