28 Times Better

Red went for her blood test on Tuesday. Things are better than last time. How much better? Her HCG levels at this point in our last cycle were 39. This time they're 1105. AART was happy with the levels this time and booked Red in for an 8 week ultrasound on Nov. 19. And on top of that, they gave us a due date. An actual, honest to God due date. July 1st. (That's right, the 7th month... not that that's anything but a coincidence.)

The last few weeks have been particularly brutal at work, so when Red called me Tuesday afternoon, I went out to the hallway and sat down on the floor and listened to the tears of joy pouring out of my cellphone. Despite the fact that Red had taken two home tests prior to the official blood, and both had come up positive immediately (not what happened last time), she/we were still nervous, not sure if we were deluding ourselves. Apparently we weren't.

In addition, Red has worse symptoms than before. Very sore breasts, frequent trips to the bathroom (er, more frequent), fatigue, some unsettledness in the stomach and food issues. Plus she says that she can feel her uterus expanding. All good signs according to the book. (Though it's still a bit weird to tell someone how badly your wife is feeling and have them be happy for you.)

Of course we're still nervous. We're approaching the day of the miscarriage in the last cycle; every day without problems is one day closer to confidence. If things are good at the ultrasound we'll be a little more sure. Once we hit 3 months (mid-December) we'll be even better.

We've been so paranoid about using the B word, we still call it the embryo. Or maybe it's still calling them the embryos. Red's levels are high enough - maybe both embryos survived. How crazy would that be?

We're a little nervous with all the swine flu talk going on, especially where being pregnant puts Red in one of the high risk groups. However, being in that group means queue jumping abilities for vaccinations. In accordance with the song Mark posted on his blog, I think she should find a way to maximize smugness when she does her queue jumping.

Anyway, as Buddy Holly would say, we're crying, waiting and hoping. Keep sending the good mojo our way - it seems to be working.

One last thing: 28 times the levels, same day as my birthday, in July, and 28 is a multiple of seven! Eh, eh... (Travis is right... you can do this with any number, but it's still comforting in a weird way. I think it's the imposing of an order on a situation that you can't really affect.)

Love to you all...