Evening ladies. I promised Nauseous & Mollie I'd share my experience with hcg blood tests in early pregnancy, and I've been really slack and not done it, so here goes. But be warned, you did ask so this is the unedited version - feel free to speed read
When I saw my GP after my first mc (mmc) she said that next time if I wanted to I could have an early scan and she would check my hcg levels for reassurance - they should double every 48-72 hours in a normal pg. So I said yes please and when I fell pg again in January I went along for the tests.
First test was at 4+0 and showed really good levels of progesterone and hcg, so high in fact that I wondered if it could be twins...
2nd test at 4+4 showed that the hcg had increased but the progesterone had decreased quite significantly.
So they repeated the test 2 days later. Showed hcg increasing by not enough.
So they repeated the test AGAIN 2 days later. Showed the same.
So they repeated the test AGAIN AGAIN 2 days later. Showed the hcg and progesterone were both falling, despite the fact that I was taking cyclogest by that stage.
The GP confirmed it was another early mmc. I was devastated. All I wanted was to go in for an erpc as soon as possible to get it over with. Sorry if that sounds dreadful, but bear in mind this was mid January and my last mmc was only 2 months previously.
But the hospital wouldn't see me. Made me wait almost a week until I should have been 6+5 and said I had to have a scan to confirm it, then they'd talk about where to go from there. I couldn't understand it at the time, it seemed incredibly cruel to keep us waiting even longer when we'd already been TOLD by our GP that there was definitaly no hope.
But of course we waited, what else could we do? And in due course off I went for my scan.
To our utter shock and amazement it showed a 6+5 week bean with a strong heartbeat, measuring exactly right for dates.
The nurse consultant at the hospital told us that's why the hospital don't do repeat hcg tests and always insist on waiting to at least that stage to scan. Because often falling hcg levels means a mc is on its way, but ONE IN FIVE women with falling hcg levels will go on to have a healthy pg.
As it turned out, we lost our little boy at 17 weeks. The falling levels in our case were probably the first signs of the chromosome disorder that was "incompatible with life". But there was no way of knowing that at the time, nor was there any way of diagnosing it other than a CVS or amnio.
All the hcg tests did was add even more heartache and worry at what was already a terrible time. Having to go back to the doctors for tests again and again was incredibly stressful. I can't describe how much.
Whilst I accept that hcg results that appear to do what they should could be very re-assuring, you have to accept that they might not do what they should. And what then? It's too early to get any diffinitive answer, and ime just leads to further heartache, while doing nothing to numb the eventual grief should things turn out badly as they did for us.
This needs to be an individual decision for every woman who is unfortunate enough to find herself in this situation. I hope that sharing what happened to us might help prevent someone going through what we did . Of course the end result would have still been the same, but the rollercoaster of emotions we'd been on, even by 6+5 was incredibly painful.
Having now read Lesley Regan's book it seems she doesn't offer hcg tests to her patients for the same reason, and I know some pct's won't do them either. The reason is that they're NOT definitive, and so how much use can they be?
Sorry for the rant. I hope you understand.