It's Beta Day Hip Hip Hooray! (5/21/13) Journey #4

*I apologize that I did not get this finished and posted on actual beta day. (yesterday) In my defense it was a long day and I was gone and driving half the day and also pretty tired.
So this starts out with my pondering in the morning before the beta and then what we found out.
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I am starting to think that I'm not the kind of girl that has high numbers. My beta was 60 with my first surrogacy- singleton and about 324 with the twins. So I have no idea what to expect, but hoping for 100.

If you're part of the surrogacy/IVF world, you know most of us are POAS (peeing on a stick) addicts. In other words, we test at home.

After the embryo transfer you enter what is called the 2ww- The 2 week window, or 2 week wait, or the dreaded 2ww. It can be torture waiting and waiting and wondering. Some of us pee to pass the time.

For me it has been helpful to know what's going on. I do better when I know what's going on. It doesn't always mean anything though because anything can change at any time. Last time I tested at home and got positives, but they were on the light side. It ended up being a chemical pregnancy.

It's not like when I got pregnant with my own kids. I only tested at home once with my own pregnancies and then would do a follow up blood test at the nearby lab to confirm. Easy peasy. With IVF and someone else's genetics, you never know what will happen. You could be pregnant one day and not the next. That's why it's so encouraging to see the lines keep popping up and getting darker each time. That's usually a good sign! Either way, I'm always nervous to get too excited at first, even when I see the positive results.

I wasn't 100% sure if I was going to test this time. It sucks to get excited and then to lose the pregnancy. However, with my 3rd couple we had a failed transfer and I didn't get any positives, so it was nice to be prepared that way as well.

Here are my tests this time around:

(this is just what I started with before the transfer... the collection grew)

I am only posting the ones you can see... not every single test. So be grateful!  

:)

You can always skip ahead if you're not interested...

I know you're not supposed to trust blue dyes (and yes it's light) but hubby found these on sale for me at Walgreens and I couldn't tell him no. I loved that he had accepted and possibly even encouraged my addiction.

The digitals are always nice to see. Do you notice the pink lines getting darker?

I believe these were 7 days also. Aren't they cute? Pink and purple. Only oops, the pink one is an ovulation test. It looks like there's a line on the pink one, but it's a shadow. LOL.

Getting better all the time!

Oh my gosh! Look at those lines!!!

These cheap tests are 88 cents at Walmart. They're great to get it out of your system (literally, ha ha) but for some people (like me) the lines don't get very dark. They did however get dark(er).

I started getting excited!  

It's a good thing the Dollar Tree test provided this caution!

This one gave me butterflies with how fast it showed up and how dark! Great test the night before the beta.

The morning of the beta. Not bad for the cheap tests!

Just hanging out, waiting for results after getting my blood drawn.

I was hoping that Amazing Grace would call to tell me the news.

And then later Amazing Grace called with our number and I was super happy!

 (5/21/13 11dp3/5dt =62)

The clinic was happy and thought 62 was a good number. We're pregnant!

We have gotten over the first hurdle- the two-week window and now we know that we have a good number that indicates a pregnancy. Next step is for the number to double and then in about three weeks we should be doing an ultrasound to look for a heartbeat. And then we pray that we have a lovely uneventful pregnancy for the next 9 months.

Itchy bruised, knotty, sometimes sore bum/hips (from the progesterone), but a small price to pay and well worth it. 

Oh and sometimes you prick your finger..

I have been extra tired the past week. I could easily take 2-3 naps a day. I wonder if that means anything. Maybe it's just my body doing everything it can to protect the embryos and make them nice and comfortable and stress free.

I know I was super tired with the twins, but I don't remember if it was this early. Maybe I'm just getting old.
I also started feeling pretty nauseous today. Hmmm...

Please please let the numbers continue to rise and let us incubate a healthy baby or 2 or 3...

I go back tomorrow and the number should be around 120.

*Update- 2nd beta was 140! Woohoo, we're pregnant!