Beta results are in -- DRUMROLLLLLLL Please!!!

 First I woke to a sweet email from my IM -- even though they may be on a completely different continent, it never feels like they are far away!  They always message me checking in on me, especially on days that I have appointments or something going on.

I had the blood drawn this morning at 9 and I have been waiting, tapping my fingers all day... I just knew when I stopped by my doctor's front desk this morning and saw that her name was not on the schedule today that I would not be getting results back!  So I did some school work, tried to take a nap, a little house work and then I went to pick up Weston from school.  I had already tried to call my Doctor's office to have these results faxed to the RE's office but they seemed perturbed as to why I was calling-- much like the girl this morning at the front desk.  She just wasn't grasping that my PCM had put the order into the system for another ordering physician and that my doctor didn't actually need the results.  Long story short, I think my results are sitting on my doctor's desk to sign off on when she returns because in the system, she was the ordering physician.  So I chose to drive over there today after I picked up Weston and get the results from medical records!!

I immediately emailed E&L first because they will always be the first to know everything about their little teacup growing (yep, I chose a new nickname since I nurse tea all day now!)

So here it is -- our wonderful results!

One of the first questions I get when I tell of any news relating to the cycle is 'What do the parents think?' So I thought it might be neat to give their responses:

L's (IM) Response -- I can always count on hers to be excited and warm and supportive!

E's (IF) Response -- His is always witty and funny and cracks me up! (And he used our very southern term of y'all - I am not even sure that exists in England?!)

 
I emailed the results to the nurse coordinator that was waiting for them and she called me very excited.  She said she wanted to see a number higher than 150 so we are past that!  She also made the comment that the old cliche goes 'It only takes one!'  We certainly beat all odds with this one little embryo and we are completely blessed that we were able to give that little embryo a chance!




So 'What next?' as there is always something next in surrogacy!  We have another beta on Wednesday to make sure it is doubling correctly.  If it doubles correctly, it should be somewhere between 785-946 (obviously these are very scientific numbers!)  Sometimes doubling faster can be indicative of twins and sometimes doubling slower can be indicative of a slow grower or even problems like a chemical.   The doctors want to see the numbers double by 48-72 hours or they may order another beta to keep a close eye on it rising.



My lovely and oh so supportive friends keep throwing this word around... twins!! Because I got early tests and my sickness came on quickly. But I believe our number is firmly in the singleton category which is what all parties wanted -- a single healthy baby.  But for the sake of educating, I am posting some charts from betabase.info to show what normal betas are for singletons and for twins.  They have triplets there too but if my number was anywhere near what triplets were, you might just have to hold me up from passing out!

The median for 18dpo (13dp5dt -- you add those numbers together to get your days past ovulation) is 579.  That is the average result for the 2,746 women who recorded their result.  The lowest reported was 19 and the highest for a SINGLETON pregnancy was 12,318.  Our number is pretty close to the median number so we fit so nicely into having just one single baby tucked inside of my uterus for the next 8 months.

Again, the median for 18dpo is 1,140 with the highest reported as 9,289 and the lowest at 40.  hCG levels can vary so much from woman to woman.  Could it be twins, sure.  But one single hCG number does not indicate that so I am sticking to my single-story.

I also wanted to touch on twins and how they are more common in IVF.  When speaking of twins, there are two different types-- fraternal and identical.  Fraternal twins are more common in natural pregnancies than identical twins are and they can also be genetic or 'run in the family'.  Fraternal twins are when two separate eggs are released and fertilized or in the case of IVF, more than one embryo is transferred to the waiting womb.  These two babies never share a placenta or a sac. 

In the case of identical twins, there are 4 different types-- di/di, mo/di, mo/mo and conjoined.  Identical twins are a phenomenon in nature and scientists are not 100% sure what causes them to happen.  There are some theories depending on the type of twins they are as to why it happened.  The different types of twins happen at different periods of the embryonic stage.  For simplicity sake, I am including an image to help describe this better than my words will.

If the embryo splits in the first 3 days after it is fertilized, then the babies are di/di twins meaning they each have their own placenta and their own sac. This is obviously the safest type of twins.

Next are mo/di twins.  This is when the embryo is cleaved around 4-8 days after the egg is fertilized.  This is more common from what I read in mothers/egg donors who are advanced maternal age.  The reason the doctors say this is more common in AMA is because the egg shell is harder/more tough and may cleave the blast as it is hatching out of the shell into two different pieces thus making two babies.  These twins share a placenta but have their own sacs.  They have a pretty normal twin pregnancy (if normal is a word with twins!) with less high risks. 

Once the blast has implanted into the uterine lining, if it is then cleaved or separated (days 8-13 after fertilization) then these are known as mo/mo twins.  They share both a placenta and sac. This is nearly always a high risk pregnancy.  The babies have the chance to have their umbilical cords get wrapped up in each other and could cause the blood/nutrient flow to stop if they are entangled too much.  Also the risk of twin-to-twin-transfusion is high with this type of pregnancy as well due to the sharing of the placenta and sac. Sometimes one twin will get all of the nutrient flow and the other will not causing a huge discrepancy in weight during growth.  Usually mo/mo pregnancies will end up on hospital bedrest to monitor the babies growth and to help monitor change in cervix and other things during this pregnancy.

Of course conjoined twins have the highest risk but fortunately they are the least common.  These embryos don't cleave until days 13-15 and with this, they share a placenta, sac and some body parts-- some even share a heart so it would be deadly to separate them after birth.  

As always, I am still learning, even though I have been a student of surrogacy for 8 years so if you ever see anything that is not quite right, please let me know so I can correct it!

Finally, the dreaded shots. I have about 7 more weeks to go on these-- I have been on the estrogen for almost 5 weeks and I have been on the progesterone shots for about 3 weeks now.  I have muscle soreness that hurts but I am trucking right through it.  I got some advice of running with these muscles knotted up so I am foam rolling these muscles too!  But I recently had a shot that somehow went awry and got a knot and bruised!  Ouch!  Tonight I go back to that side, hopefully it is not awful to do a shot back at this location again!  The less savory side of surrogacy -- the backside!!

I will be sure to update ASAP on Wednesday when I have the second beta results! I still have to post my photos from the teacups first adventure -- In Their Boots Day with the Bn where I got to go to shooting simulators and 'ride' in a Humvee to see what our Marines do when learning to do their job!