Brooke asked, and sometimes I forget that there is a whole world of people
out there who don’t use acronyms in conversation, SO, I’ll explain what mine
mean:

HCG Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (I just spelled that out without googling
it, because I was the spelling bee queen — hope it’s right) is the hormone
that comes from pregnancy. If I’d had zero, then I’d be experiencing an
hysterical pregnancy, which, believe me, it’s nice to know I’m not THAT
crazy yet. What should happen is that HCG should double every 48 hours. If
it doesn’t, that could be a problem — people with slow doubling rates can
have successful pregnancies, but many don’t. Mine went from 165 to 330 in 48
hours (and almost exacty 48 hours, I went to the lab at the exact time I had
o Thursday) which is GREAT. That’s spot-on, it’s right where it should be
according to cycle length, ovulation, conception, etc, so that’s great.
Plus, bonus of Not Crazy!

Progesterone is needed to support pregnancy. My doc likes to see it at
around 20, frantic googling shows that 15 is a good ‘magic number’ but I’m
at 12.3, which had me freaking a bit, until I read the comments in this
post*

, which
made 12.3 not seem as BAD, just more "not ideal." To help, I will pick up
some vaginal suppositories of straight-up progesterone to supplement my own.

From that link, I also found this website which is a nice thing to compare
to: www.betabase.info

— it is reassurin to see
that my beta numbers all firmly in the average range for successful
pregnancies, so there’s that. I will also be having an ultrasound at the
hospital (so I think it’s 4-D) on September 19, just past 6 weeks, to look
for a heartbeat. Good lord, that one will be nervewracking. But, if it
doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We’ll just have another tool in the arsenal
(progesterone suppositories) for next time. Pregnancy after miscarrying is a
very ambivalent time, let me tell you.

*I’m not sure that gmail will transfer the links when I post remotely, so
here is the permalink: http://julia.typepad.com/julia/2004/07/welcome_to_the_.html