7DP3DT - 12DP Trigger

Another day, another POAS. Still nothing.

Okay Thalia. I hear you. It's early to be testing, but really, it's not that early. That is, if the BetaBase's values are to be trusted. More on this entertaining line of thought in just a second.

The BetaBase asks women who've had successful pregnancies (success means a heart beat was detected) to enter in their beta values for the number of days past ovulation that they tested at. It further breaks down data for singleton and multiple pregnancies. The problem with this data is that unless you're doing a medicated cycle with a trigger, you can't know the "exact day" you ovulate. You can get pretty damned close with BBT and LH pee sticks, but it's not totally precise.

On the BetaBase, days past ovulation is considered to be equal to the day of egg retrieval. In an IVF retrieval, a patient injects HCG and has her eggs aspirated 36 hours later. At 38 to 40 hours the follicles would naturally erupt. Hence, chemically induced ovulation. So since I retrieved last Tuesday, today being Friday puts me at 10 days past ovulation, or retrieval as it would be in my case.

Now looking at the BetaBase, and realizing that the data may be dubious, the first entry is for day 10. Here, let me just recreate the table here:

Beta Scores for Successful* Single Pregnancies

Days Past Ovulation	Median HCG Level	Lowest HCG Level Reported	Highest HCG Level Reported	Number of women reporting a number for this day
10	12	3	103	78
11	27	2	152	332
12	47	2	208	735
13	77	4	575	1248
14	117	3	2088	2039
15	166	3	2088	2499
16	247	5	2744	2703
17	366	5	4591	2749
18	541	7	6234	2643
19	786	16	6164	2479
20	1131	41	10000	2259
21	1632	41	16224	2005
22	2223	58	19861	1707
23	3166	17	22500	1497
24	4417	144	28000	1289
25	5791	218	36984	1084
26	7308	290	36924	917
27	9193	351	41625	762
28	11886	429	53812	659
29	14687	440	73973	551
30	17461	539	131472	467

The first line is where we're at today. The median HCG level for today is 12. Half of the women's data falls below 12 and the other half above 12. I'll agree that today's too early to be distraught. But yesterday after I'd posted about how white that pee stick looked, I went back and took a second look and it actually looked a bit better than the previous day's. I had hope for a few hours yesterday that today I'd see an even darker line. No such luck.

Here's the breakdown of HCG levels for today:

Day 10* -- 211 Single Pregnancies Recorded
Beta range (Number of Pregnancies in this range)
4 - 6 (11) <---I am here
6 - 10 (15) <---Or here
10 - 16 (30) <---Or here
16 - 26 (45) <---Or here. Anything else would test positive.
26 - 43 (53)
43 - 69 (31)
69 - 112 (13)
112 - 180 (6)
180 - 290 (4)
290 - 467 (0)
467 - 752 (2)
752 - 1210 (1)

Very interestingly...they say the "median beta" for day 10 is a value of 12. But looking at the data for day 10 you realize that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for 12 to be the median given the data. Their computations are simply incorrect. The beta median for today would be more along the lines of 26. So it's actually worse than I thought. Unless, of course, they're just serving up bad data all around. Possible. Entirely possible.

I'll keep retesting each morning as usual, as per Dr. B's recommendations. I'm sure I'll be quite mad by Tuesday.