What the heck is hCG?

Having been pregnant before, you'd think I'd know what hCG was or how to measure it, etc. You'd think wrong. When I was pregnant with Peyton, I knew that I was pregnant within seconds by the two lines on the pregnancy test. I knew that I'd be pregnant for 40 weeks, 10 months even though all the time you hear that it lasts 9 months. Those people are wrong.

I knew what a contraction felt like by about 36 weeks into my pregnancy, and 3 days after the 40 week mark (my due date) I knew what it felt like to give birth. If you asked me much more than that, other than what I couldn't eat during pregnancy, I didn't know. I am the type of person that will start turning into a hypochondriac if I am too educated on certain things. I tried to avoid reading all about pregnancy because there is SO much that can go wrong. No matter if you get pregnant via IVF or the "normal" way.

Having said that, now that I actually know what hCG is, I'm still not freaking out and thinking about the millions of things that could go wrong. It is probably the simplest thing to understand.

In short, hCG is a hormone that is elevated during pregnancy. Its what causes the little two lines on the pregnancy test to appear, if your levels are high enough.

When I went in for my blood test on the 19th, my hCG level was about 152. This confirmed the pregnancy.

I had another blood draw on the 21st to re-confirm pregnancy and make sure that my hCG level was rising. (Apparently this is what it's supposed to do throughout the pregnancy. My knowledge was still pretty minimal.)

Carrie called me a couple hours after my blood draw that day to let me know that the results looked great, my hCG level had increased to 407. It had more than doubled in just 2 days! Because my knowledge was bare minimum, like I said, I did some googling to research what that meant. (Not always the best idea, but I was curious!)

Basically, the higher the hCG level the more likely it is that there is more than one baby growing in there. This wasn't 100% accurate, as there have been many times where women still only had one baby and the hCG was the same as someone who was having twins. What they look at the most, though, is how rapidly the level itself increases. Like I said, mine had more than doubled in 2 days! I was hopeful that meant there were still two babies growing in there! Carrie even said there was a "good chance" that it meant there were twins. I hadn't had any bleeding or anything since the transfer, so that was also a good sign. We would do an ultrasound January 5th to check heart rate and the number of babies. I tried not to get too excited by this little number that I really knew nothing about, but E & S wanted twins SO BADLY and I wanted to be able to help give them that. Plus, how cool is it to be able to say that you've carried twins? Double the fun, right? (I may regret saying this later.)