I’m Not Pregnant….Now

OK.  Here’s the scoop.    

I’m not really sure what the scoop is. 

We think something happened this month, but we’re not sure.  In fact, we think we might have experienced one of those events that experts say most people don’t even know they had.  (And can I just say that Dave and I have been talking about this nonstop for days, yet now that I start to write this, I refer to it as “event” and not “miscarriage.”)

OK, so here is the scoop as we know it.  We are very clear on when I ovulated.  Both our OPK and the temperature shift confirmed the same day.  About 7 days past ovulation (dpo), I had cramps.  We had cramps when Conor set up house in “Utica,” although these felt a bit different.  Conor’s cramps were very sharp and clear.  These were more muted and to be honest, although I am definitely not Dooce, we were on vacation and I have been known to have vacation constipation.  So I wasn’t sure whether we were having implantation cramps or poopy cramps, but given the timing we were hoping for the former.

So the next morning, I took a pregnancy test.  And it was clearly…ambiguous.  Dave and I both thought we saw a line, but it was very, very faint.  Again, this is similar to what happened with Conor.  When I think back to the line we think we saw, I swear that we could see the pink in the positive place with pinkness extending into the edges of the First Response Early Pregnancy test, but if I just flashed the test in front of you, none of you would have initially said “Oh, yes!  I see a line!”  We would have had to point it out to you.  Again, though, this is the same thing that happened with Conor.

So the next morning, I expected to see a fully positive test and to have good news to share with our friends and family at the beach.  Except….the test was fully negative.  There was no line, no where, nothing.  Instead, we saw clear, smooth whiteness in the spot where the positive line should have been.  Hmmmmmm, we thought.  Did we make up that faint positive or did we just find out we’d had one of the many, many pregnancies that end before most people know they are pregnant?

We don’t really know.  I had cramps for the rest of my luteal phase.  We even tested several more times and never saw another test that looked like that first one.  AF arrived 5 days later than she normally has in the recent past and 3 days later than she has before we had Conor.  It’s been also heavy and painful visit.  (But why would AF be late if we had such an early miscarriage, if that’s really what happened?)

In obsessing over what could have happened, we have learned that it is possible (likely?) that we had a very early miscarriage, also known as a chemical pregnancy.  In fact, on some sites, I’ve found that 50% of pregnancies are chemical pregnancies that end in very early miscarriages and even one post that claimed that 8 out of fertile 10 women TTC have a chemical miscarriage at some point in their lives.  I’m not sure I believe those sites because I cannot find out their data. 

However, we also learned some good, but disturbing information from the New England Journal of Medicine.  This is an empirically strong study of 200 women trying to conceive by tracking and analyzing their morning urine.   It found that 25% of the pregnancies end in miscarriages within 6 weeks.  In fact, many of the women had miscarriages before they even knew they were pregnant; that is, they had a normal or slightly late period, but had been pregnant during that cycle.  This study also determined that the longer the implantation date, the more likely a chance of miscarriage.  Implantation by the 9th day has a 13% chance of miscarriage while implantation 12 dpo or longer has an 82% miscarriage rate.  (YIKES!!!)  The vast majority of implantation occurs 7 to 10 dpo, hence why the overall miscarriage rate is only 25%. 

So did something happen with us?  Maybe.  Are we emotionally OK?  Yeah.  This is so different than how I’d be responding if we had had a clear positive test and then AF still came.  The ambiguous positive never completely excited us.  We are not sure we were actually pregnant. If we had not tested that particular morning, we would have absolutely no ambiguity about last month: no bun in the oven.  And honestly, after reading so many infertility blogs online, I would not be surprised that if we were a little pregnant and that there was simply something wrong with egg/sperm combo.  That doesn’t bother me if that’s what happened.  However, if that is what happened, I feel lucky we never got a clear positive test.  Our reactions would be very, very different.  That is one thing I’m very sure of. 

12:44:53 PM