The Back Story

Welcome to our blog! At the request of our friends (and because it's obviously a great way to keep everyone updated without incurring HUGE phone charges), we have started this blog. We'll try to post as often as possible - but being that we're both busy people, it may not be every day.

Today our Little Honey (the name that you'll hear me refer to our baby most often) is five weeks old. S/He is still very small and burrowing away inside my uterus.

Here's the back story:

On August 9, 2006, we tested positive for my LH Surge. After verifying the positive with a good friend (who is already pregnant and using the same methods...so she KNOWS), we placed a very excited call to Carolin at Columbia Fertility. We were scheduled to come in at 10:00 AM to have our very first insemination. At 10:17 AM on August 10th, I was inseminated. And then the wait began.

That weekend, I had a very weird experience and ended up spending a good portion of my Saturday in the hospital with an excruciating pain in my lower abdomen. Weird. It turned out to be medically nothing. Or at least nothing that the ER could identify and nothing that Dr. Sacks could identify when we went to see him on Monday morning. What was significant about that trip to the ER is that for the first time, the ferouciously protective side of Kelly came roaring out. She tended to me like the most gentle nurse, but whenever the real nurses came at me with anything, she made sure they knew that I could be pregnant and not to give me anything that could harm the possible baby. Sweet. Cute. Very loving. And something that we'll always laugh about.

So, on with the story. We continued to wait. At 8 days past ovulation, I had to test. So, into the bathroom I went, Kelly timed me and we got a negative test. Okay - that was fine. We didn't really expect a positive. I tested again in the morning on Day 10. Nothing. On day 11, I had to test again. I got up early in the morning and peed on the stick. Again - a negative. Bummer. But, okay. Three negative tests. We had pretty much determined that we were not pregnant. We were using First Response, so we thought that we were getting the most accurate readings. We resigned ourselves to trying again next month. (On a kind of gross note - I am taking progesterone. I'll leave the nasty details alone, but just know that my period would not have started on it's own. The progesterone prevents that in order to lengthen the lutenal phase to give the possible baby time to implant properly. So...we were not just waiting for period to start...we were relying on tests to tell us what was going on in my body.)

Back to the story. On the morning of the 12th day past ovulation, I decided that we had to test again. Yes, I know - I'm obsessed. This was Tuesday morning and was the day after my period was due to start (that is, without the progesterone). I stumbled into our bathroom at 4:00 AM when I get out of bed and grabbed the ony prenancy test that we had upstairs - a CVS brand. I peed and then waited for a few minutes. After watching, and rubbing my eyes a couple of times, I determined that I wasn't seeing things. HOLY COW - THERE WAS A POSITIVE LINE!!! I threw open the door (bathing a sound asleep Kelly in very bright light). She squinted open one eye and looked at me very confused. I said, "I think we just had our first pregnancy test." LOL - never has one person moved so quickly. She threw back the covers and stumbled out of bed, her eyes wide open. Into the bathroom we both went to peer at the test. We eyed it up. We rubbed our eyes. We read the directions in the box. We compared our line to the examples. We determined it was definately a positive test! WOOOO HOOOOO!

So then, I had to shower and get ready. Kelly tried to go back to bed (both of us knowing that would never work). She finally got up and we got ready and headed to work. At 7:29 AM, I called Carolin again (she starts work at 7:30 AM). Her response was "You've got to be kidding me!" Then she scheduled us to come in that morning at 9:00 AM. My blood was drawn and then the waiting began again. But only until about 1:30 in the afternoon. Carolin called back and said "Happy Mother's Day." My beta was 28 - anything above 7 is considered pregnant! I called Kelly and said "I'm gonna tell you what Carolin told me - Happy Mother's Day!" Lots of squealing and disbelief later, we hung up the phone.

That was Tuesday the 22nd. On Thursday the 24th, we went back in for another beta. You know - they need to set up a cycle. This time the number came back at 48. Mildly worrisome. This is where the drama started. Here's the thing - for those of you who don't know. Your beta is testing the level of HCG in your system. HCG is created by the developing placenta. It's supposed to double every 24-48 hours. If it doesn't, it indicates that something may be wrong. So, from our first test to our second test, my doubling time was just about 57 hours (or just over 2 days). Okay. Not so horrible. We scheduled another beta for Saturday.

Saturday the 24th came and we tested again. We got a call in the afternoon (from a doctor other than the wonderful Dr. Sacks), who told me that my beta was 77. Not good at all. My double time had in fact increased - not at all what you want to see. All signs were pointing to not a great outcome. Ugg. After an agonizing weekend and Monday, we finally went back to see Dr. Sacks on Tuesday morning, the 29th. He took another beta test and did an internal ultra sound. The internal ultrasound didn't show anything, except a thickening of my uterine wall in the back part of my uterus. Dr. Sacks indicated that he thought this may be where our Little Honey was implanted. But the proof of viability would be in our beta number.

I got a call from Carolin at about 1:45 on Tuesday. My beta number was 288!!!!! THANK GOD! This indicates that all is going well. Our Little Honey is doubling as s/he should and things seem to be progressing along.

That brings us to today. We are five weeks pregnant today.

I promise that the remainder of the blogs won't be this long. But for those of you who are joining this story now (we haven't told EVERYONE), I wanted to make sure that you knew the story.

:-) Mikki