Chemical ... Again

I hate that I have to do this update - but I do.

This cycle is officially a bust. At 8dp5dt (8 days past a 5 day transfer, or 13 days past ovulation) I got a faint positive on a First Response test. I was excited but worried because I knew it was fairly late to be getting a positive test and that usually means low HCG levels, which usually means chemical pregnancy (early miscarriage.) The tests kept getting darker over the next several days, but then when I had my blood test on Tuesday it came back at only 22. We tested again today to see if by some miracle the number would double, but today it was down to 7. Another chemical pregnancy. Here's the HPT progression - as gross as it is to post pictures of pee sticks, I find it really interesting. Especially keeping in mind that my HCG today was at 7, and I still got a clear second line. That is a sensitive test!

Obviously we are very sad and disappointed. Everything went so perfectly this cycle that we really had our hopes up. But we do have a lot to be grateful for. I'm relieved that it didn't take us weeks this time to find out that this pregnancy is not viable. And we have 10 awesome looking blastocysts that are frozen and waiting to be transferred.

We plan to move ahead right away with doing a frozen embryo transfer. Our insurance coverage is maxed out (amazing how quickly we reached that $15,000 lifetime maximum!) so from this point on we'll be paying for everything completely out of pocket. Needless to say, we very much hope that the next cycle will be the one that works.