623.8

The nurse was very pleased as she told me the blood work was positive. I was pregnant. She asked about my spotting, which has continued, and didn't seem to be concerned at all. At all.

They want me to return in a week for a second HCG reading. This is when I started to cry on the phone, trying to keep it muffled. An entire week to see if the number is rising or falling. An ultrasound wouldn't be for  a week after that. Two weeks to determine if I am in the process of miscarrying one embryo right now.

I want to believe her that there is nothing be worried about. I want to trust the high number. I want to feel overjoyed with excitement that the FET was successful and I am pregnant for a second time.

As soon I got off the phone, I went to bathroom to find more blood. It was brighter red and with a small clot again. As if just to remind me that this wasn't over.

In the research I could muster, approximately 20-25% of pregnancies will have first trimester bleeding episode(s). The research reports that 50% of these will end with a healthy birth. The other half aren't so lucky. I also read that bleeding is more likely in the case of twin pregnancies.

On this exact day in my first pregnancy, the HCG was over 1,000. This was with two blastocysts transferred,  one healthy heartbeat discovered the following week, and no bleeding. I could not find any research comparing blood test results from one pregnancy to the next and what this could imply. Clearly my research has not been particularly helpful or comforting.

My fear is that I was pregnant three days ago. Then the bleeding began with a full miscarriage to follow but the HCG was still high today. My fear is that it was higher three days ago and now it is dropping.

My other fear is that all of this is a partial miscarriage of one of the embryos. In two weeks we are going to find one developing embryo and remnants of a second. They say that if not implanted the embryo will likely just "re-absorb" into the uterus, which is what I am assuming occurred with our first IVF. I find this oddly comforting. It is still with me, reabsorbed within me, because it was not suitable to grow into a human on its own. This is much more comforting then the embryo being slowly dejected from my body. I fear now that if there is one embryo on the ultrasound in two weeks that I won't have any other interpretation of the bleeding but this and it sickens me.

I tell myself to trust the nurse and medical team. I tell myself that there is nothing anyone can do at this point regardless of the outcome. I tell myself to take care of my body and the likelihood that I am supporting life. None of this seems natural. And with my "high" number, I feel so ungrateful and whiny that I am not more enthusiastic and hopeful. This is not at all the reaction to a positive pregnancy test I expected from myself.