Numbers: or "Never tell me the odds!"

IM had her 3rd hcg beta test today and....(drumroll!!!!!)...246. Hmmm. Lame. Here's where we are:
date beta days-post-ovulation?
6/5/2009 - 70 - 15
6/8/2009 - 159 - 18
6/10/2009 - 246 - 20

Ok, days-post-ovulation is a bit tricky b/c IM didn't actually ovulate. But, we transferred a 5 day blastocyst on the 26th of May which works out to making today 15 days post 5 day transfer, which I believe, the IVFers around the internet call 15dp5dt. They love acronyms! Now essentially you add these numbers to get 20 days-post-ovulation. At least I think that's how it works :) Anyway, where was I?

Evidently, it is best for a viable pregnancy if the beta doubles every 2 days, or doubles every 48 hours, or sometimes you read doubles every 48 to 72 hours. Another number you read/hear is 66%, in that you want the beta to grow by 66% every 48 hours. Considering 48/72 = 66% that must be where the number comes from. What it really means is that if your beta is on the slow end of the spectrum and doubling every 72 hours it will be growing by 66% every 48 hours. Make sense? Well, if you crunch our numbers a bit you see that between our test on the 8th and the one today (the 10th) the beta grew by 57%. Of course, like everything in IVF there is some controversy about how solid a number 66% is and whether a person should start feeling discouraged yet (why do I feel discouraged then?). In that vain, you read numbers like 50% and 60%. Well, fine, whatever. It still doesn't change the price of oil in Egypt...as they say. (Do they even say that?) Being the nerd that I am I made a plot.


So here where are back again, 360 degrees in a full circle. A betting man would be betting against us....again. I want to cry, scream, and just sink away into nothing and disappear. And to think....I was feeling really confident this morning until we got our results. It's just amazing how emotionally labile I am these days. (Labile...that's IM's favorite word.) I'm high and low and all over the place. I'm feeling soooo discouraged right now and this morning I was feeling confident that if I wasn't quite a father yet I would be one soon. How's that for pathetic? Why will this not happen for us? We've compromised so many of our dreams so far that it is just nearly unacceptable for this not to work. I would say I'm ready to give up...but I'm not. I don't know what I am. Plus, this cycle we are in right now and the fact that IM is in fact pregnant right now...as I write...well...let me just say it's still a possibility that this will work and we will finally get our dream. Our next number is very crucial in my mind. The beta needs to hang on to the lower end of these growth curves or I think we're fucked and all I can contemplate right now is: what then?

...I'm trying really hard to channel Han Solo right now when he admonishes C3PO to "never tell me the odds!"