Baby #6, Beta #1

I got the phone call last night. Actually I got two - two nurses both rushed to be the first to call me, which was either genuinely sweet, or an indication of how bad my clinic's internal communications are.  (Side note: Let's just say that the people at the clinic are all absolutely sweet and compassionate, but no fewer than three people asked me if I was getting blood work done because I'd had a positive home test, despite me calling and saying "Hi, this is Me. I'm 15 days past trigger and got a positive home pregnancy test, so I'm calling to schedule blood work." Their internal communications are the pits.)

Anyhow, at 13 dpo, my hcg is 67. Pregnant. A bit less than the median hcg of 86 reported on betabase. Drastically lower than the 249 at this same dpo with the girls. Still undeniably pregnant.

So I return on Saturday to retest and we see if my hcg rises as it should. Doubling time should be approximately 48 hours, so we're hoping for a 140 or so. I'm not holding my breath, given my history and how this cycle has gone.

I am feeling so many emotions right now. None of them are good. Here's the thing: starting out TTC in October 2015, I was adamant about only wanting one child. I wasn't interested in the challenges, the costs, the physical demands, or the stress of two. I just wasn't. I am an only child, I liked that lifestyle, and I wanted that for DH and I. I truly, truly did not want two children.

Despite that, when I saw the girls' heartbeats for the first time, nothing has ever felt so right to me in my life. And when we found out both were healthy girls, I could not have been more overjoyed. I don't have words to explain how utterly perfect everything about that situation seemed. It was as if something I didn't even know I had dreamed of had come true. Despite the constant retching, I was so happy because my family felt "right" to me.

Today doesn't feel right. I have this awful feeling that if today's beta had come back strong, if I had the sense that this pregnancy was twins, I would feel so much better. Instead, I feel this sense of loss, knowing that this is, at best, a single baby. Knowing that at most there's one baby growing in me leaves me feeling like I've lost what my future was supposed to be - what the dream I didn't know I had until I had it was. I feel like I can't possibly love this one baby as much as I love the girls. And I feel so fucking guilty for feeling this way. It's unfair to that baby. It's horrific, when I interact with so many amazing ladies who would give anything to have a single baby. It's what my life would have been if my first, second, or third pregnancies had gone to term. It's what I wanted right up until that first ultrasound last August.  Why can't I be happy, that maybe we'll finally bring a child home with us, from the hospital? I don't know, but I'll hope that it resolves as time passes.