All We Want is a High Number

After doing one more IUI, the one we swore would be our last, the one that was going to make or break our fertility experience. Caroline "felt" pregnant, but she had "felt" it before, and nothing ever materialized.

If you're not aware, when you become pregnant your body produce the pregnancy hormone, HCG. HCG is measured in all at home pregnancy tests, as well as in your blood by the doctors. We knew too much about HCG, the highest Caroline's ever got was a 60, the doctors consider you to be "pregnant" at a 20, but want it to be at 100 the first day after a missed period, and then it is supposed to double every two days. We never sniffed a 100, we also never saw anything double.

She had all the symptoms of a pregnant person, her boobs were sore, she was tired, and all of the sudden food was smelling and looking weird. So we took a test...positive, but we had been there done that before, so our emotions were tempered.

Caroline, being the numbers whiz she is, was going to outsmart the system. She Googled every pregnancy test and wanted to find the ones that only showed a positive with the highest HCG level...needless to say 6 positive test later and $123 poorer, she had them all lined up on the counter. We had digital smiley faces, faint pink lines, dark purple lines, plus signs...we had seen it all. But, we still weren't believers.

So off to the doctor we go, blood drawn...and then the agony of waiting to hear back from the nurse. We had to wait for 6 hours for the phone call, it seemed like a month. Phone call comes and Caroline shattered her record...277 was the new number to beat. Then three days later when the number should have doubled...she shattered it again...1,592.

Then we were like oh crap...that's really high...oh well twins would be awesome, triplets would be manageable...and any more than that was never mentioned.