Expectations...

I've always been a big believer in the idea that much unhappiness can be traced to having expectations that are not warranted or unrealistic. Unrealistic expectations are obviously dangerous but even unwarranted or ignorant ones are equally dangerous. For example.....

...quick recap....IM took some home-pregnancy-tests and all were positive....then on Friday she had a blood test and a positive beta with a number of 70....the nurse says "well, we usually like to see over 100" but then she realizes that our original beta was supposed to be yesterday, i.e., 3 days after the one IM took...so the nurse renormalizes and says it's actually looking good....so on Sunday night IM takes another h.p.t. and gets a positive (that was a pretty obvious result considering she had a positive beta two days earlier but she likes to see a positive h.p.t result!)...so that brings us to yesterday....

Yesterday was supposed to be the original blood test and they like to see a number above 100. Well, IM's number yesterday was 159! Good news! Things are growing and everything is moving in a positive direction. However, two weirdish things happened:
(1) we got playing the expectation game this weekend. We were feeling really positive and happy about our situation. We told both of our parents the news (we know...it's early...but why not share happy news) and were allowing ourselves to feel good. Then we start talking about the nuts and bolts of betas. How the beta is supposed to double every 2 days (it turns out there is quite a window of acceptable range for the doubling though) and we start making "bets" on what the beta will be. IM figures it'll be 250. I figure it'll be around 200 b/c the beta grows exponentially and blah blah blah who cares :) So, right before our eyes...unbeknowest to us...and against my usual philosophy we set up an unwarranted expectation--an ignorant one. So, even before we had the beta results I found myself feeling really down yesterday. I was stressed out and dreading the result. There was all this pressure that the beta be high...at least around 250 or hopefully better...I wanted the number to be even higher than we thought and then that quietly and stealthfully became what I expected the beta to be. But, there's the rub. What did we base this expectation on? Almost nothing.
(2) Meanwhile the nurse tells IM the result and then tries to temper any excitement by saying that it's right on a "border" of growing too slow...something about 66% and 154. Huh? This could very well have been IM's first beta and it would've been over 100! The nurse also lets out that the Doc wrote something like "beta increasing as expected". That sounds like a good thing, right?

So, yesterday, we're both at work and IM calls me with the results and she's really negative sounding which totally affected my reaction. Then we both spend a hour or so messing about on the web looking at beta calculators and other mishmash. Ultimately, it seems there is quite a huge range of beta numbers that constitute normal growth...so we're doing fine! This whole thing just makes me furious b/c now I'm trying to build back up to a positive mood regarding this whole thing. It's just amazing how fragile your mood and emotions are when you are undergoing IVF treatment like this.

All in all, the beta is increasing and has, in fact, more than doubled in 3 days from the first beta. This is normal growth indicating that everything is going as it should! IM is pregnant! It finally happened!

Stay tuned for the next beta.... :)