A Perfect Trip

Our anniversary trip turned out to be nearly perfect in every way.

The B&B was lovely as always. Our first morning there, we went out in a canoe immediately after breakfast, and the blue heron who gives the place its name was out in the lagoon where the dock is. By the time we returned a few hours later, he had moved to the other side of the dock and was still fishing, waiting for us.

The Perseid meteor shower peaked just after 2 am on the morning of our anniversary, so we got up, went out and laid on the dock watching the meteors go past. It was a new moon, which meant nearly ideal conditions. Alas, the Canadian wild fires impacted air quality, so I'm sure we missed some of what we'd otherwise have seen, but it was still stunning. I found myself repeatedly thinking 'my girls are here, this beauty is for them, this is exactly what I wanted for them.' I also kept flashing back to laying out under the stars with DH many years ago when he proposed on a camping trip, so it really was a perfect night.

Later that morning, we took Quinn's ashes and paddled back out the island where we left Alexis and Zoe. The wind was pretty strong and I'm 100% inept as a canoer (is that even a word? canoeist?), so we didn't take a straight path. Along our route, a loon suddenly popped out of the water a ways off from us. As we paused to watch, he re-surfaced no more than 15' from our canoe and let out a call. We watched as he repeatedly dove and fished and he always kept resurfacing near us. Eventually we decided to head toward the island we needed to reach. The loon proceeded to escort us all the way out, around the island we were closest to, and up to the island where the girls are. As we said goodby and scattered Quinn's ashes, the loon stayed watching a short distance off, and vanished just as we were done. I am completely sure he was an honor guard for Quinn. It was beautiful and perfect and I know my girls are together, and in the right place.

Everything did feel very, very familiar, as we got the call with my beta on the drive out, and it was fantastically strong. Just like two years ago, I also started bleeding, so it was odd being back in the same B&B bathroom, dealing with estrogen and progresterone suppositories and bleeding, but it was almost a comforting sense of odd.

And now for the news I've been waiting for:
Beta 1 at 11 dpo was 119
Beta 2 just came in, at 15 dpo and is 845

That's a 33.24 hour doubling time, per the betabase calculator.

I was over 800 at 14 dpo with the twins, but betabase shows 800 as the median at 17 dpo with twins and 19 dpo with singletons, so it still seems there's a chance we may see more than one heartbeat at ultrasound. I am praying with every fiber of my being that whoever is in there, they are healthy and they are the baby(ies) we get to raise.

For those who enjoy HPT progressions, here's my First Signal/Walmart progression.