IVF: Testing Galore

So during this whole "journey" to become parents, I was never one to take a pregnancy test each month. I just knew the signs of my period and it came every month, no testing needed. I've taken about a thousand ovulation tests, but only three pregnancy tests. Twice early on and once when I was late by 4 days and turned out to finally be pregnant last year.

This time, I took a ton of tests. In order to trigger the release of the eggs, you take a shot which is made of the pregnancy hormone HCG so it ends up showing up on a pregnancy test. In order to know if you are pregnant for real, you take tests starting when you do the shot up until it shows that it's out of your system by having a negative test. Then if you get a positive after that you can trust that it really is a positive test. It can take 10-12 days for the HCG to get out of your system and usually by days 12-14 post ovulation of a regular cycle, an implanted embryo's HCG will show up. For an IVF cycle, the embryos are put back in on day five after "ovulation" so days 12-14 would be 7-9 days post transfer to mimic a regular cycle.

I started taking tests nine days after the shot since I knew it would be impossible to be out of my system before that. I wasn't sure if I was going to start taking tests to find out if I was pregnant, but by day 11 the test was almost negative so I figured day 12 after the shot (only 4 days after the transfer but technically nine days post "ovulation" aka retrieval) it would be out of my system. So when I took what I thought would be the last test and it came back darker than the day before, it was decided for me that I would definitely keep testing.

I mean, four days after transfer and it looked like I was getting a positive test?? That is crazy early! I had heard that if you had cramps, that was a good thing and I was worried for a few days because I definitely hadn't had any. But then two nights after the transfer I felt a sharp cramp that told me maybe it was working. I calculated that most likely I wouldn't get a positive test until maybe Saturday if it had worked. But we had transferred two embryos and if they both stuck then there could be a higher amount of HCG which could show up earlier. But I never thought I'd possibly get a positive that early!

We had to wait until nine days after the transfer to see through a blood test if it worked, but by then the line on the home tests had gotten darker and darker every day so I was sure the blood test would be positive. But would it show a high enough numbers to indicate both embryos took?

When we did the test, we had to wait a few hours for the phone call with the results and sure enough, it was positive! The number was 229, which is well within normal limits for just one baby, so we still weren't sure that both had worked. Some of the tests I had taken had been lighter than others despite trying to control the day and time I took them, so I thought that maybe both implanted but that one had dropped off. I figured that's what happened once the numbers came back in the single baby range.

But we were pregnant! It was so great! We were so worried throughout the next week until our next blood test. This would be the test that would tell if things were still progressing. It was one thing to be pregnant, but what if it ended as soon as it started? What if I produced a lot of eggs but they all sucked and were destined to miscarry?

But thankfully, we got another good blood test result showing that things were progressing as they should so our next "test" would be our ultrasound at 7 weeks!