Not only lightning strikes twice

I thought only lightning strikes twice. I was wrong.

Yesterday afternoon I had what felt like a tummyache. I went to the bathroom and felt constipated, and when I wiped, there was fresh blood. I rested on the couch and called my husband to come home from work early so he could take care of C and put him to bed. Over the course of the next few hours I passed blood and clots - probably about 4 tablespoons worth. It was frighteningly similar to the bleeding in the fall, and we were pretty sure we knew how this would end.

Woke up this morning and didn't have any bleeding, but still felt crampy. I had about 5% hope that the bleeding all came from my cervix, since I'd had the good ultrasound last Thursday that showed no signs of a bleed. Went in for an ultrasound this morning, and it's clear the pregnancy is over. It looks like there's a lot of blood and clots still to come, but there's no visible gestational sac. No hematomas, though (which we believe to be the cause of the bleeding and miscarriage in the fall).

Our last girl, gone, in a blink of an eye. We're devastated. We were so joyful and optimistic about this pregnancy, and this happened out of nowhere. DH isn't sure he wants to continue trying to add to our family. I definitely understand where he's coming from - it's not the right time to make any decisions about this, but we have C, and it's so so painful to deal with loss after loss, when we've done everything we can to make sure all possible variables have been removed.

The universe sucks.

Quick update - 5.5 weeks

Beta on Wednesday was 4157, which floored me. Our doubling time is about 26-27 hours. We didn't get the number until Thursday morning, so I was awfully curious what I'd see at the Thursday ultrasound. (Of course on the way to the ultrasound, NPR was airing a show about raising identical twins... hee!)

Thankfully, we saw one (phew!) perfect gestational sac. And no signs of any bleeds. Too early for a heartbeat - our next scan is May 5, when I'll be 6w5d and should definitely see a heartbeat.

We retested my immunology (NK and TH1:TH2) and they all came back normal, so no intralipids, and no more retesting. I just do another beta/progesterone/CBC this week, and then progesterone/CBC afterwards until 12 weeks.

I'm frequently queasy - mostly at night when I'm reading in bed, but also sometimes when I'm driving in the car. My theory is I actually have low-level queasiness pretty frequently, but life is distracting at other times, so I don't really notice. I'm sleeping very soundly. And my breasts are getting a little bigger - I swear sometimes I can feel them grow.

We went ahead and told our parents and a few close friends. C will just be 2 when his little sister is born, so I'm guessing he won't understand anything I try to explain until the fall. He generally has extremely good comprehension of things we say - for at least a month he's followed instructions like 'please put that back in the drawer' or 'please put your pajamas in the laundry basket', but this is a little more abstract. ;)

Whoa Nelly!

We're pregnant! Beta #2 was today. It tripled from 211 on Friday (10dp6dt) to 644 today (12dp6dt). 

She implanted quickly - I didn't feel implantation but started having symptoms within 48 hours of transfer. And then spent the next week hoping I wasn't being too optimistic. I POASed on Wednesday (and freaked myself out by not waiting 3 minutes to look - you'd think I'd know better by now...) For the math to work out I had to be producing HCG pretty quickly. 

I have an early ultrasound scheduled for Thursday  so we can look for any signs of a potential bleed. 

Her due date is 12/24 - two days after C's due date (though his birthday is 12/18). Conveniently that means my maternity clothes are all the right season, as are the hand me downs. And I guess we'll be experts at how to handle Christmas birthdays...

Next hurdle - hoping for no signs of a bleed when we look on Thursday. I didn't think there'd be anything to see, but our betas will be over 2000 by then so we should see a gestational sac. I'll schedule the first regular ultrasound for the first week in May when we hope to see the heartbeat. 

Starting another 2ww

A quick update...

We transferred our last XX embryo today. It was only a 3BC when the clinic graded it this morning, but two hours later at transfer time it had expanded to a 5BB (5 measures its progress/growth, B is the quality of the inner cell mass, and B is the quality of the trophectoderm that forms the placenta. We were initially disappointed to hear the embryo was so far behind the other embryos we transferred (last one was fully hatched), so it was a huge relief to hear it was doing so well.

I did an intralipid infusion last Friday, just to cover our bases, and as I mentioned in my last post, my RE did an endometrial scratch for me a month ago.

Our transfer for C was 4/6/12. Hopefully we'll be able to say his sister's transfer date was 4/8/14.