I'm Pregnant. IVF - The Pregnancy Test

It worked. We did it. I’m pregnant, finally.

I only recently started sharing my infertility journey, but we have been trying to start our family for two years and nine months. At some point I’ll summarize our journey, detail the emotional turmoil along with all the medical crap. But today, I’m too fucking happy to talk about all the heartache.

For anyone counting or paying attention to dates, this announcement is a bit delayed. The blood draw for my pregnancy test was the morning of July 9th. I have now known about the pregnancy for four weeks. However, the wacky pregnancy timeline math that begins at my last menstrual period puts me at eight weeks pregnant. Eight weeks and two days to be exact. There are a lot of reasons I delayed the announcement. A couple of which being nerves and wanting our families to enjoy the news first. I have also been ridiculously busy. In the last four weeks, along with adjusting to the nuances of early pregnancy, I finished planning my wedding. And then got married. That’s right, we’re married! More on that later, lets talk about the day of the pregnancy test.

The morning of the pregnancy test was the same as all my other morning blood work appointments at the clinic, with a thousand times more nerves involved. I had stayed near Spokane until the pregnancy test, but Casey and I had agreed that we would ask the news to be left by voice mail so we could find out together. My blood draw was at 7am, by 9am I had a voice mail on my phone answering the question I was dying to hear the answer to. To say that it was a long day would be a drastic understatement. I managed to get approval to leave work a few hours early and was on the road by about 3pm, and managed to arrive home around 8:30pm. Minutes later, Casey and I were holding hands in the kitchen while pushing play on my voice mail.

After my nurse explained who was calling (like I wouldn’t know?!?) we heard the words – “Guess what?! You’re pregnant!” And that’s about all we heard. Cue tears and hugging and kissing. Actually, cue tears again now – it was one of the most emotional moments of my life. I’m fairly certain we had to repeat the voice mail at least ten times before actually hearing it all.

My HCG level came back at 132, which I’m told is excellent. At four weeks they want HCG over 50, and mine definitely was! While the initial HCG level is important, the second one is more so. I went in on Friday to verify that my HCG was at least doubling in a 48 hour time period. Turns out we have a little over-achiever, my second test came back at 333! After verifying my HCG levels were acting appropriately I was scheduled for a weekly ultrasound and blood work to make sure things were progressing properly. And to see how many I’m cookin.

I could go on, but this is a blog post, not a novel. My next updates will be much sooner that next month, I promise!

Coming soon: