Issue 54: The Bad News Brigade
Saturday June 21 2019
Well, that was a nice weekend. Ha! No it wasn’t. Last Friday we got our “positive” pregnancy result. If I was on them, the forums would have been blowing up. BFP! We got our BFP!! (I’ve googled it for you: big fat positive!), but then they would have also been bolstering me with optimism regarding the hideously low hCG hormone level that triggers the BFP. In our case, the big fat 5.9. Sorry, the tiny skinny 5.9, I should say. You see, I can pretty much read these numbers and abbreviations like piano music now. I know that a number below 5 is a negative pregnancy result. A number between 5 and 500 is positive. When you have this knowledge, it puts our paltry 5.9 firmly in its place: borderline, teetering into negative territory.
I spent the rest of my friends’ wedding feeling almost as sad as I did with our last negative result, but I couldn’t help but be infected by Mr B’s and Lydia’s palpable excitement. They were beside themselves in their numbers naivety. That, coupled with the doctors email saying “we remain cautiously optimistic” leaves a tingle way down in my belly that allows me to think there is still a chance. The doctor wouldn’t say that if there wasn’t.
Cautious optimism is really quite optimistic when you break it down, no? It’s definitely not outright pessimism, which is frankly refreshing for us, so I’ll hook every ounce of my focus on that three-word phrase and let it carry me through the weekend. There is a school of IVF thought that says that the hCG value doesn’t matter anyway: as long as it’s doubling every couple of days or so as the developing embryo and placenta releases more, it’s good. It’s not a mainstream school, more of a Montessori school, but still, it exists, and Jane, our surrogacy co-ordinator, is a pupil there. “I’ve heard of pregnancies starting off low and being successful. So long as it’s significantly higher by Monday!”
As far as Lydia is concerned, this is it. She’s done it! A pregnancy so positive that she told her mum, who is super-excited, and now she is eager to make the travel plans for the heartbeat scan in a few weeks. That is the next step, once you’re over the initial pregnancy-test hurdle, to make sure that the embryo has a yolk sac and it’s not just a “blighted ovum”, where the embryo implants, but does not develop. So many scary steps still to come!
Mr B is a model of cautious optimism. He’s thrilled, but he doesn’t want to allow the thrill, so he tries and fails to conceal a circumspect up-turn at the corners of his mouth the entire time. Even when he says, “Why the f*** couldn’t it just be a normal positive result like everyone else’s?” he has a deep authentic furrowed brow, accompanied by an almost imperceptible smile. It’s confusing as hell.
I echo his thinking. Why? And then I feel sorry for myself again, so I lurk on a couple of forums in a misguided effort to rev my optimism engine. “Has anyone ever had a successful pregnancy with a 5.9 hCG result?”
Wait no, too specific. “With a low hCG?” This was a mistake. There were hundreds of threads, all variations of the theme “I’m panicking because my hCG was only 78, anyone know what to expect?” and then the responses: “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry, you might still be in with a chance, though, if it doubles at your next test.” Or: “Sending sticky dust.” (This is forum speak for: “Let’s hope it implants and stays there”). Gah. Shut laptop. Watch another interminably long hour tick past. I just need it to be Monday so that I can be put out of my misery and get everyone on the same melancholic page as me. I can’t be the one to burst Lydia’s balloon, or turn my husband’s cautious smile upside down.
And then the tingly “what if” feeling creeps back in. People have miracle babies all the time. It seems so common, in fact, that “miracle” might need to be redefined in this context. I know of three people who were told they would never have children and now have seven between them and another on the way. One after chemo-induced infertility, in fact. I know I sound like the kind of unwavering positivist I usually want to drop-kick across Peckham Rye Park, but if I’m telling it to myself, it’s OK — OK?
This little seed of hope keeps growing in my belly, and I imagine it in tandem with the literal seed of hope we have growing in Lydia’s. Come on, little seed, you can do this. Sending sticky dust and baby dust and all the rainbow power of a thousand unicorns.
Positivism is wonderful, by the way. We had a lovely weekend in the end, spurred on by the collective excitement of our little party of three (maybe four!). We managed to get through six meals, one evening out, four episodes of This Is Us, an entire spring clean, two bottles of wine and two sleeps until MONDAY!
Except the clinic forgot to send Lydia the “script” for the correct blood test, so now we have to wait until Tuesday. BRILLIANT! This is in no way torturous for all concerned and we’d relish another day of lounging in our cautious optimism, thanks.
At least we can cram in another episode of the box set and another bottle of wine. Another 37 jittery WhatsApp messages back and forth, another sleep, and then, TUESDAY!
“I am sad to say the result is now negative.”
Not a surprise, but still. Seriously? I’m beginning to get embarrassed about our bad luck. Is that a crazy thing to say? In the midst of all my worries I’m worrying about the embarrassment of delivering yet more bad news to my family, to my friends, to you readers, and to every person ailed by infertility to whom I am desperate to present a positive journey. This is getting a bit boring now. Here comes Negative Nancy and her trail of bad-news baggage. I think it’s why I immediately straighten my back and blink away my tears and make a plan for how to crack on. Because giving up is so not an option right now.