Times Ten

I had another beta done this Thursday (six days after the last) and the level was 3515! More than 10 times what it was at the previous one.

I had a moment of elation and then realised that it meant that the HCG had not continued to double as fast as it had done between 15 and 17dpo. Panic - it's all going wrong, the beginning of the end . . . and then something tickled the back of my brain - doesn't the doubling start to slow down at some point? Thanks to Dr Google, I discovered that it does slow down around 1200. Some semblance of calm was resumed.

It didn't last long though. I am plagued by a lack of symptoms - or an inconsistency in symptoms - or both. I have had occasional mild nausea, but have had days with none. Sometimes I run to the loo with frightening regularity, sometimes hardly at all. I have bad heartburn (I have reflux anyway) but isn't that supposed to come much later?

I have tended to have nausea very early on in my pregnancies (as early as about 8 dpo) and the waning of symptoms has always signaled the end for the pregnancy. So, like most folk who've had a shaky time reproductively, I would LOVE some real morning sickness. My sister, the ex-midwife and mother-of-two, tells me to be grateful and wait for how bad it gets later, but I have no faith in a "later".

We got the house we were bidding on with my parents. Now there's another scary venture fraught with the possibilities of wonderful happiness or utter disaster. Because my parents now have to sell their house to fund the buying of the new one. It's been on the market for three days and there's been one viewer. We're all panicking!

While I'm using the house as a distraction from the pregnancy, my mother is doing the reverse. She really wants to talk pregnancy with me. She is so optimistic that she's going to get another grandchild and I feel so mean when I tell her I can't talk about a baby's room or maternity clothes. I feel like I'm depriving her of an experience that she's waited for so long. My sister is a lot more private than I am, so I'm guessing that she didn't overshare with my mum when she was pregnant, so this might be my mother's big chance. And I just keep pouring cold water on the whole thing. I was so determined to enjoy what I could of this pregnancy, but so far it seems like that lasts for about 2 minutes after the news of a good beta.

Talking of which, I am going back for another beta this Thursday - seven days after the last. By my reckoning, it should have double twice plus a little more by then. Or stopped altogether!