Yep, and it was the best thing I could have done! I love being a student and was really struggling as a consultant.
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Hi everyone!
I think I am the only one here who is actively TTC? And by “actively” I mean “the egg retrieval is tomorrow.”
2 kids from my first marriage. I was pregnant 3 times in 3 years, with the last one being an IUD failure that didn’t work out. I wanted that third baby; my first husband didn’t particularly want either of the two we already had but especially the second, who was a careless oops. (He is a loving dad, it was just a hard sell.)
Started trying for that third baby as soon as I remarried in September 2018. I always said I would not do IVF because it was overkill for a third kid (the Boy never especially wanted “his own” kids), but then 2020 happened. My grandfather died. My brother died. And I found out all the things that are fun about having older kids (like being able to travel and go to restaurants) can be taken away. My mom offered to pay and we’re going for it!
This is IVF cycle second and last. If it doesn’t work out, I will embrace life with my two awesome boys.
Re: timing: I am sooo much in camp “there is no great time.” I struggled with infertility before conceiving my first child. When we started, we owned a huge house in Georgia and both had jobs. When I finally succeeded, my husband had no job, we were in the process of short-selling the house, and we were living in a one-bedroom apartment. (We moved to a three-bedroom duplex before baby arrived.) It was fine.
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We are currently not preventing but not actively trying for baby #2. For baby #1 who is 2.5 right now we were married and both had stable jobs when we started trying. I applied while trying for baby #1 for a new job and found out I got it the day after I got a positive pregnancy test. That definitely made things interesting!
For baby #2 our goals before having another were to move from our 1100 so house into a larger house. We are finishing building that new house now so I got my IUD out. Last time it took 6 months after getting my IUD out to get pregnant so we will see how this round goes. We wanted the kids to be closer in age but life didn’t quite work out that way.
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If it helps, my sisters are 5 and 8 years younger and, sure, it’s a different relationship than being a year (school grade) apart, but we are all quite close. And my mom believes it was easier on her, not dealing with two in diapers and having older kid(s) somewhat self sufficient when she had an infant. At least past the “death wish” stage!
I know there’s a lot of considerations and everyone is different. But larger age gaps do work out. 
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My kids are back to back and are best friends. But my FOO are very spaced and are also very close
Everything has advantages and disadvantages, but I’m sorry you didn’t get your first choice spacing.
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My kids will end up being 4 years apart even though we wanted a gap 2 years. In our case we wanted 3-4 kids so having longer gaps could mean we don’t have as many kids as we want, or have the last kids later than we’d like. I know there’s advantages to longer gaps just as there are advantages to smaller ones, but it still feels a bit rubbish when stuff doesn’t work out, no matter the reason for the longer gap or later start time.
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So I guess I belong in this thread again. “Not Pregnant…Anymore” is more like it I guess.
Mainly here to ask questions about using ovulation strips. I didn’t use them last time, just tracked temps and fluid. But I had three different women reach out to me after hearing about my miscarriage (I decided to do an awareness-raising post on social media) saying that they got pregnant really quickly after a miscarriage using them.
So the strips I ordered arrived last week, and I have so many questions after using one for the first time.
All Kinds of TMI
My doctor told me I could count the date of my D&C (11/21) as CD1 just for my own purposes, but I didn’t really feel the bleeding was “periody” (bright red, enough to use a pad rather than a liner) till the 27th and that only lasted a couple days but then I’d been spotting on and off since then, even as recently as yesterday.
But being a curious person, I decided to test out the strips today, since it would be CD14 measuring by what the doctor said. And it was like ragingly positive? At least according to the instructions. Both lines were really dark with the test line slightly darker. I was pretty shocked because I thought there was no way that I’d already be ovulating when my body didn’t seem to think I had my period till like a week ago.
My temps haven’t spiked yet, and I didn’t feel my usual ovulation pain, but I have been ragingly horny for the past couple days like I usually get at ovulation—but I chalked that up to not having had sex for 3 weeks. (The first week, I knew the baby was dead and didn’t want to jostle it out before my D&C. The next 1.5 weeks, the doctor had told me not to have sex for 10 days after the procedure. And the remaining few days, I just still felt on-and-off bloody and gross.) Except I finally did last night.
And now I’m thinking, like, there’s NO WAY that even if conception occurred this cycle, that there would be implantation—it seems like there wouldn’t even be anything for it to implant into, since I got all my innards scraped out a couple weeks ago and was still kinda spotting even while having sex yesterday. Or could it?
Basically should I be acting like it’s a TWW if my temps spike in the next day or two? Or should I, like NOT have more sex this weekend if my lining isn’t ready—could that set me up for another miscarriage or something? Clearly, another pregnancy would be welcome, but I am in some kinda shock that I got a positive OPK so soon.
So. Many. Questions.
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So, to answer the first question- yes. But if it doesn’t spike, it’s worth noting that hcg can trigger a positive LH strip. So if your HCG is still high, the strips aren’t effective at this point. As to the second Q; having or not having sex would have zero relation to lining or the miscarriage.
Edit to add: a lot of people will use the cheapie pregnancy test strips to “test out” either an hCG trigger or a miscarriage. Basically, you keep testing until the line goes away. That way you know when your hCG has returned to (basically) zero. That’s assuming your doctor doesn’t follow your Betas down to zero.
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Given your procedure went smoothly, others I know have more or less been told that getting pregnant after is fine. Slightly more “optimal” to wait 1 cycle, maybe? But if your medical team gave you the go-ahead, then it’s fine to have sex, and it’s fine to get pregnant.
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I had to have my HCG tracked to 0 as I had a partial-molar, and I found the cheapies very helpful for extra checking even though I also had to have blood tests to go with it.
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Oooooh, that’s probably what it is, then. After I read your post, I tried one of the pregnancy strips and there was still a very faint positive happening, like what I saw when I was about 13DPO. Man, that gave me some bad feels, though, to see that line and know that it’s showing up that way almost 3 weeks after the baby was confirmed to be dead. And to remember the excitement I had the last time it looked that way. I was not expecting that, oof, many tears.
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Big hugs, and I’m so sorry. For many people it can take weeks, some even months for the hcg to leave. Although I also know someone who did ovulate and got pregnant again even while still testing positive.
This shit is just. Shitty.
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I’m sorry. I’ve had that feel.
My body seems to hang on to hCG for longer than should be reasonable: 11 weeks the first time and like 7-ish weeks the second.
Nothing was wrong, it just took a while, so hopefully you get there sooner. It is possible to ovulate through lingering hCG, but harder to track, so sometimes it’s recommended to wait for zero hCG so you know when a positive is a true positive.
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Oh man, yeah, like, how do you even know if you’re really pregnant again if it hasn’t even stopped showing positive the whole time? Biology can just fuck right off right now. I am pissed about this.
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Practically speaking, you would test twice a couple days apart and see if the line gets darker. Impractically speaking, waiting to see if a faint line is a real line or leftover hCG sounds like even more of a mindfuck than testing down hCG and hoping for a negative.
Is your doctor having you do hCG blood tests to follow your levels post-procedure?
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I don’t think so . . . they only did one blood test on me the entire time, pregnancy, miscarriage, and procedure combined, and it was to test my blood type. I would be surprised if they do another one at my follow-up on Monday. They had me pee in a cup each time, but don’t seem to be big on tracking things by blood.
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I continue to be delighted by your doctor 
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Thankfully, Monday should be the last time I ever have to see him. I’m officially part of a different medical group now and have access to new doctors, finally, as of the first. I just scheduled this last visit with him for continuity since he’s the one who did the procedure (and he’s also on the new group too, so it shouldn’t fuck with my insurance to get it over with).
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Woohoo! Fingers crossed for better docs going forward.
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Oh good, because I was also extremely unimpressed with the standard of care you were getting.
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