And NOW comes the hard part?! Are you kidding me?

I thought the hardest parts of having a baby when you're infertile is producing a healthy egg, getting that egg to fertilize, and then seeing if the embryo will implant. I thought that once you got past those hurdles, the rest should be gravy considering how difficult of a journey it was to get that far. Well, I was wrong. My friends on Fertile Thoughts call it PITS - Post Infertility Traumatic Stress Disorder and I think I have a full-fledged case of it now.

I should have been able to relax after my second beta number came in to show a strong and healthy rise. Well, I did relax - for about two days until the spotting began on Saturday night (at 4w5d). I remembered hearing that spotting during early pregnancy is normal, as long as its brown or pink and doesn't yield a high volume of bright red bleeding accompanied by cramping. Ok, fine. I will deal with the occasional spotting, then, if I must. I'd rather not have that additional worry, but it seems to be a relatively normal part of early pregnancies. Normal is good. To be on the safe side, I sent an email to Dr. Sacks just to let him know that I've been spotting and to get some additional re-assurance from him that everything should still be ok. He told me not to worry since my blood test results were normal, but to contact him if it got worse.

Well, it got worse this morning (5w0d) during a trip to the bathroom. The spotting turned into full-fledged bright red bleeding and was accompanied by some cramping afterwards. I talked to my nurse, Emily, who provided me with the warm re-assurance I needed. She said that many girls, especially after IVF for some reason, seem to experience bright red bleeding. In most cases, things turn out ok. To help alleviate my fears, she told me that I can return for another beta tomorrow (if I went today, I wouldn't get my results until tomorrow anyway - plus, if I'm just miscarrying now, my HCG levels would probably still be high, so I wouldn't trust the results anyway), but they can't do a sono yet because they wouldn't see anything. She advised me to track the amount of bleeding and keep her informed (e.g., if I needed more than a pad every few hours, which made me feel better because I'm just wearing a pantiliner). Luckily, it seems that the red bleeding has stopped. I'm back to spotting dull red / brown on the pantiliner and the toilet paper, so I hope this means that all is ok. Whatever happens will happen - it's really out of my control.