Second beta

Just got the results from my second beta test this morning: 337! This means a doubling time of 41.19 hours. I will have a third and final beta on Tuesday and then a first u/s next week Friday (5w4d).

The results are in...

My first beta, at 12dp2dt is 67!!!

Woohoo - first beta with IVF#1 was 55, so I find 67 to be a great number (I read somewhere that FETs give lower betas? Well not in my case)! Second beta will be on Friday. Keep your fingers crossed for great doubling numbers...

OMG!

I had to pee after having my blood drawn, there was a HPT in my bag, so I thought "what the heck", and used it. And OMG, a second line appeared!

I sat on the metro with a stupid grin on my face.

Now just, please, don't let this be a residue from the booster shot I had last week... I googled it and apparently it takes 24 hours to get 1000 IU of a HCG booster shot out of your system. I had a 1500 IU shot last Tuesday, so that should be gone by now, right..?!?!

Lab results will be in at 2 pm.

At the lab

Should have gone in earlier. Waiting room is packed...

I kept to my own promise not to POAS. Maybe I'll do it just after I get my blood drawn, but HPTs have pretty much always meant disaster for me, so I'm not sure... too afraid to see only one line. No AF yet, but usually that would be 15dpo, so not until tomorrow.

Changing

Today I had my third beta: 853 - everything is going fine, yay! (and thanks to the betabase I now know that the doubling time between beta 1 and 2 was 48.1 hrs and between beta 2 and 3 49.31 hrs - if this interests anyone at all).

I had a strange conversation with my RE's office though. When I had gotten the result from the lab, I called my RE's office to tell them (standard French procedure, see my post below on 'labs and nurses - the French way). The assistant asked me if I already had an OBGYN for the rest of my pregnancy. Eh, no... She told me I could stay with them, but that would mean with Dr. 'Speed'. Eh, no thank you... Or otherwise find an OBGYN myself. Oh, but what about the ultrasound that they told me they want me to have about a month after the transfer (which means next week), would that not be done at the fertility clinic/RE office? No, I should just schedule that with whichever OBGYN I'm going to pick...
So that's it? No last 'good luck' RE visit? Why won't they do that first ultrasound? Wouldn't that be a better way to really say that the IVF procedure was a succes? I think it's weird...

Pff, so now I have to find an OBGYN. Of course I could call the RE's office tomorrow morning and ask them for any recommendations in my neighborhood (I forgot to do that this afternoon). I also asked three friends who live near me and had babies last year. One already responded and said she had a wonderful doctor, who was recommended to her by the hospital, but that she's actually a general practitioner, who does have a lot of pregnant patients, but is not an OBGYN. Hmm, if she was a real OBGYN, I would immediately call, but now I'm not sure. Maybe I should just call, explain my situation and see if she thinks I can be her patient or if I should go to a more specialized doctor?

Well, I have to wait until tomorrow anyway before I can call, so have some time to think this over a bit. If you have any great suggestions, please let me know!

Yes!

Today's beta is 310! Yay!!

So, I'm now trying to calculate my doubling times (unfortunately the doubling calculator on betabase.info doesn't work, at least not on my Mac) but I'm not that great at logarithms and exponentials... Exact number will have to wait until I have an Eureka moment or I'll ask a math-wizard, but a rough calculation gives a doubling time of just over 48 hrs.

3rd beta on Thursday.

Stupid

I've done something stupid this morning: I took a home pregnancy test. It was positive (of course), but the line was not as dark as I would have hoped. So now I'm worrying that my beta is going down instead of up...

Of course this is completely stupid, because I have nothing to compare this line to - I didn't test yesterday or the days before and I don't have another kit at home, so can't test tomorrow (my initial idea was to buy several kits and test a few days in a row, but in the end decided I shouldn't spent too much money and try not to obsess about it).

Other than that my symptoms are still the same: sore breasts, tired, lower back pain, and some (minor) cramping. I wish I could just be a normal ignorant pregnant woman...

Reassured

Well, of course I had to google some more about hCG levels and luckily found some quite reliable sites that were able to reassure me that 55 is actually a pretty ok number and that you basically can't say anything after just one hCG test. So a new waiting period starts - 5 days until Monday - but for the moment I'm pregnant!

So far so good

Got my beta hCG result: 55 - BFP!
Well maybe not BF, the number seems quite low when I compare it to what other women had at this stage (12dp3dt), so I'm not jumping for joy yet (it's also quite surreal to have a BFP after more than five years of TTC/BFN). But the assistant at the clinic said it was positive and we should wait and see what the second beta is on Monday. If that one's OK, then maybe I'll be able to relax a bit more...