Hello??? Anybody in there? It's me... out here standing at the gates of pregnancy. If I could just have a hint... a sign... something letting me know if I'm going to make it in? Remember me? I miscarried on Mother's Day? A little courtesy wink or nod letting me know what's happening here would be great. I think I've earned at least that. No?

It's Day 14 of Pregnancy Purgatory, and I believe I'm starting to lose my mind. It's been two weeks since we received the news that our first beta was too low to be a healthy pregnancy. But we've been holding on to a microscopic shred of hope because our numbers started jumping... 14, 15, 40, 120. They're climbing, so only time will tell where this thing is going.

I go back tomorrow, Tuesday, for my next bloodwork and ultrasound appointment. I've been really good about keeping my level of hope in check. But it's getting more difficult. Today, I found myself being far too hopeful.

For the past 2 weeks, I've only been filling my pill box with enough medication to make it to the next appointment. I've anticipated that each appointment would bring horrible news and I would be instructed to discontinue medications. To my surprise, that has not happened yet. But today, I noticed that I filled my pill box for the week without realizing it. I am starting to assume that this pregnancy will make it... that I won't be instructed to stop my medications tomorrow. I can't tell how I feel about this.

I know that hope is a good thing. It's positive energy, and I believe positive energy brings more positive energy. But when you're on the losing end of hope for so long, you just sometimes feel that hope is for suckers. And I don't want to be suckered again. It hurts like hell.

So, here I am with a full pill box and another beta staring me down. Screw it. I'll err on the side of hope this time.... Just this once. But if I don't make it through these gates tomorrow, I'm staging a sit-in.

There's pregnant and there's not pregnant, but there's also this awful area in between that we'll call "a little bit pregnant." That's where I am. My beta on Tuesday was only 14. Not high enough to be blissfully pregnant, and not low enough to be able to stop all these awful meds and injections. Pregnancy purgatory... waiting for a final decision. And it sucks.

I know, although my nurse so sweetly suggests that we hold onto hope, that the fate of this clinging embie is not good. I've been down this road. I had a low beta once before that didn't quite double every two days, and it ended in my first miscarriage at 6 weeks. It was awful and painful, and I'm dreading this happening again.

I went in for bloodwork this morning, so hopefully we'll get an idea of where this thing is going today. But I did have one extra pregnancy test in the closet and figured I'd use it to make sure that the line is getting lighter. It didn't. It stayed the same... the same faint pink that it's been since the beginning. 

Faint pink means that I'll probably have to go back for monitoring in another few days to make sure my hcg drops to zero.  I don't really want to be there. Sitting in the same chair I sat in when I was hopeful and excited... now aggravated and sad. I have a hard time mustering up my silent, polite smile when I'm angry.

To cheer myself up, I've been reminding myself of all the fun things I can do again once I'm out of pregnancy purgatory. I can have a venti, full-caff, iced mocha latte from Starbucks. I can drink an entire pitcher of sangria all by myself. I can stop asking, "Does this have Splenda in it?" I can go back to Zumba classes. I can clear my mini-pharmacy off of my kitchen counter. I can stop hiding my sharps container every time the doorbell rings so I don't freak anyone out. I can have sex again. I can bungee jump (although I wouldn't... it's nice to know I could). 


They're minor consolations, but they're at least enough to keep me from going mad while I wait for today's phone call. Keeping my fingers crossed--and I can't believe I'm saying this--that my number is lower. I just want this to end peacefully.

When you're actively struggling with infertility, you learn to make a lot of lemonade. Sometimes, it seems, that lemon after lemon just keeps coming your way. And you try so hard to see the positive, to squeeze every little bit of hope out of that lemon, but sometimes lemonade just plain sucks. It sucks, and it stings your wounds.

Yesterday, we went to go hear our baby's heartbeat. At just over 7 weeks, we were pretty sure we'd be coming home with a glossy new picture of our bean and an audio recording of his beating heart. My husband had his cell phone ready to record the ultrasound, and I sat nervously on the exam table... half excited and half afraid that we's see a subchorionic hematoma because of the bleeding I had a couple weeks ago. But we were hopeful... "cautiously optimistic" as the doctors had suggested.

When the doctor started the transvaginal ultrasound, I knew right away that something was wrong. He was going back and forth, zooming in and out, adjusting the brightness and contrast. He asked the nurse to read back the numbers from my last ultrasound. He stopped. He started looking around again. Back and forth again. Then, he made that face where you squeeze your lips together real tight because you know what you're going to have to say but just don't want to say it out loud. "I'm not seeing what we should be seeing at over 7 weeks." I could have thrown up right there. The only thing we could see on ultrasound was a shadow of a gestational sac--an empty gestational sac. 

I cried on the table while the doctor was apologizing. I don't remember much of what he said besides, "You guys have been through so much." And we have. And I cried harder because we've been through so much.

Later that day, I got my bloodwork results back. My hcg had dropped from nearly 5,000 to just 19. I was ordered to stop my estrogen and progesterone immediately and wait for my body to miscarry naturally. I spent the past 7 weeks praying not to see blood in the bathroom, and now I can't will it to come soon enough. I just want it over with so I can move on.

I have an appointment scheduled with my RE for the 16th to talk about what could have happened. This was, after all  supposed to be a genetically and chromosomally normal embryo. I feel like there has to be something that we're missing--a reason why nothing will stick or grow in my uterus. Something had to have changed since my daughter was born over 3 years ago, but I have no idea how to figure out what. We'll see what my doctor has to say and decide where to go from there.

And as sad as this post may seem, I do still feel hopeful. I laughed today... a bunch of times. We went to get ice cream by the beach after dinner, and I almost forgot that anything was wrong. I go back and forth between that empty feeling of loss in the pit of your stomach and a feeling that we'll get this eventually. I know, from being through this so many times, that eventually I'll feel nothing but hope. The loss will fade and the promise of what's next will take over. And once everything passes, physically and emotionally, I'll be even more ready for my rainbow baby.

If you have to stress about trying to conceive, I think it's only fair that you have an uneventful pregnancy. Seems fair, right? All of the struggle and heartache surrounding infertility should earn you one free ticket to a totally normal, textbook, enjoying-pickles-and-ice-cream type of pregnancy. The complications--gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, incompetent cervix, etc.--should be reserved for the "oops!" babies and the "it happened on the first try" babies. Just my personal view and the way I would structure the universe if I was in charge of things. Although, for the record, I should say that no woman should ever have to endure any complications during pregnancy. It's unfair to anyone. Unfortunately, we had a little (big) scare on Tuesday that may or may not be over. 

Everything looked great at my first ultrasound visit on Monday morning. My hcg was up to 2351, we saw a gestational sac and the yolk sac, and everything was measuring right on target. I got to take home a picture of my little bean and proudly display it on the refrigerator next to his Day-6 embie portrait. I was feeling really confident. Things were looking much brighter than they had when I miscarried.

Tuesday morning, I still felt great. I ventured out to Target to pick up some more Benadryl, to which I've finally built up a bit of a tolerance. I stopped in the restroom as soon as I got there and saw every pregnant woman's worst nightmare--blood. It was what I consider to be "a lot" of blood....and the worst kind--bright red. I immediately went into panic mode. This couldn't possibly be happening again, I thought.

I rushed out of the bathroom and ran straight to the car. I called my husband on the way home and told him what was going on. I could hear the panic in his voice too. "Maybe it's fine," he said as he was getting in his car to come home.

I called my nurse in absolute hysterics. It's amazing how you think you've composed yourself until the voice on the other end answers. I must have sounded like a nutcase, hardly able to catch my breath, but she had me come in for an ultrasound right away. In the bathroom of the RE's office, I passed a bunch of clots. Smaller ones than I had seen with my miscarriage, but I thought for sure this ultrasound was going to be bad news.

They had me come right in to the exam room when I got there, and my husband arrived just in time. The doctor started with a speculum exam where he said he sees some residual clots, although it didn't look like there was any active bleeding happening anymore. He did the internal ultrasound, and after a few seconds of adjusting the picture on the screen, we saw our little bean... hanging on. He had, in fact, grown 1 mm since the day before, which was a very good sign. 

The doctor explained that there's all kinds of reasons why a woman might bleed during pregnancy, and sometimes things go on to be perfectly fine. We have to be cautiously optimistic that this is one of those "perfectly fine" times. We repeated my bloodwork from the day before, and I went home to wait it out while I rest on the couch until the bleeding stopped.

Later that evening, things started to lighten up. I passed a few more clots, but nothing too scary. By the time I went to bed, the bleeding had stopped completely. 

Wednesday, I got a call with my bloodwork results and my hcg had jumped from 2351 to 4974 in only 32 hours! It was an amazing jump, and as the nurse said, "just about the best outcome we could hope for." I was still blood/clot-free all day Wednesday and Thursday, so we decided that things are looking up. 

We think what happened was a subchorionic bleed. Although it didn't show on the ultrasound, it's the most common reason this would happen. We just have to keep an eye on it at my next ultrasound to see if it comes back. I'm still taking it easy and trying not to lift anything--including my 3-year-old. And I'm spending lots of time with my feet up on the couch. I go back on May 4th when we'll try to hear the heartbeat. I'll be just over 7 weeks at that point, so hopefully everything is on target.

This was certainly an exhausting week, and my nerves are just about shot. But I'm thankful that, at least for now, our little bean is still stuck! Physically, I'm feeling good. And emotionally, I'm trying to shake the negative worry and replace it with a deep breath. A deep if-I-can-handle-infertility-I-can-handle-anything kind of breath. And then I feel strong.

My head is absolutely spinning after this weekend, but I should start with one very important piece of information: We're pregnant!

On Friday, my hubby took the day off of work to sit around here waiting for the RE to call with my hcg level. It was just before noon when my nurse called to say our first beta was a 129... far better than the pregnancy I miscarried 2 years ago (20-something), and even better than my first beta with my daughter (40-something).

We celebrated, called our close friends and family, and spent the next two days trying to digest that our embryo actually stuck. I still had some cramping that was coming and going, so although the numbers looked great, I was worried that something was going to go wrong.

This morning, I went in for my second beta check. We were shooting for a 60% increase, which would have put us just over 200. Well, the RE called to tell us that our beta completely doubled to 259! Another fantastic number, and another sign that things are going well. I think we celebrated even a little more today knowing that the numbers were increasing appropriately. 
We have one more early hurdle to get through: the heartbeat. When I miscarried, it started the day before my 6-week heartbeat visit. I just can't seem to shake the fear that it'll happen again. My husband keeps reminding me that that pregnancy was doomed from the start. The first beta was so low, the numbers didn't increase properly at first; we knew that we had a rough beginning, but then things started to get back on track. Our numbers started doubling, so we thought we were safe. But we were wrong. 

I know that things are looking great right now, and I don't want to stress my little jelly bean out. So, I'm trying to do some deep breathing exercises whenever I feel overwhelmed with worry. I try to cast the worry aside and remind myself that things are different now. Things will be better now. Things are better now.

Our next visit is a week from tomorrow, when we'll be looking for the gestational sac. I'm praying that everything goes well, and for now, I'm just enjoying every little side effect and symptom that comes along. (Coffee? Bleh...)