Beta one

This morning I called the OB's office as soon as I could to see when I could come in to get a blood draw. I had to leave a message with the nurse and eventually got a call back. It turns out the nurse was out today and the person filling in for her was really not very understanding about why I wanted to come in. She said with this dubious tone, "Are you cramping or spotting?" I said no, besides some off and on mild cramping, but tried to tell her that the nurse suggested when I talked to her that I could come in to get my levels checked. Finally she made me the appointment, but I didn't much like being treated like a jerk.

So I got my blood drawn and went off to work. I had a scary moment when I was yanking all my gear out of the trunk, and picked up my ladder to walk into the job - *TMI alert* - I felt a little gush of liquid down south. The thing about this job is that it's new construction and none of the rooms have doors yet. It just so happened I was working in the bathroom, but it was doorless and facility-less. I really did not want to go into the porta potty to check my underwear, so I did something maybe kind of gross that just had to be done. I checked to make sure no one was nearby the bathroom, I disinfected by hands with my handy portable hand sanitizer, and I quickly just put my hand down my pants and checked - no blood. Whew. I know to expect some wetness during pregnancy, but I guess I can't help being paranoid now.

Finally I finished my work for the day, came home, got in my pajamas, had a snack. And just a little while ago the OB's office called.

This is how the phone call went down. Person who is not my usual nurse says in this voice of doom and gloom: "We have the results of your hcg quantitative check. [My normal doctor] is not in so I had [random doctor] look at it. It's ohhhhh - kayyyy......... but he does want you to come back in on Wednesday to make sure that it's rising properly. What it should do is double by then. So, the number was 808."

Way to make a hormonal pregnant woman who's had a previous miscarriage want to panic and cry! Fuck, seriously. She couldn't have phrased that in a way that didn't make it sound like this pregnancy is already over? Now I get to panic for two days until I can find out whether it's doubling properly.

A little perspective for those who don't know what the number should be... that number is not actually low according to my googling and the girls on Success After a Loss. A possible explanation is that, since she is going only by my LMP (last period) date, they look low-ish (maybe) when in fact I ovulated three days "late." Another possible explanation is that she is just an insensitive bitch. Who knows. It sucks that on today of all days my doctor and the usual nurse were out. So I guess now I get to start worrying, yay.

Update: Ok, someone found me a good chart of hcg levels. At 16dpo, the average range is from 95-223. It says 33 would be considered low. Obviously whoever just called me is smoking crack.