@AJMC1995 , @piesforever said pregnancy week is measured from the first day of your last period. I believe this is how it should be counted.
My IVF doctor in Taiwan said so too, and so I should be 5/6-week pregnant when I had the bleeding, but when I was in the hospital here in Hong Kong, almost all doctors and nurses thought that I was only 4-week pregnant, since they're counting from the date of my embryo implantation. But still they performed vaginal ultrasound on me. No embryo/fetus was found in 3 separate check-ups. They said perhaps it was still too small to be seen, or I already had a miscarriage, or it's an eccyesis. The next thing they did was blood test (for hCG) and the result came out "normal" - but they said they couldn't make any conclusion nor rule out any possibilities with just one test, since they have to see at least two tests result to find out. So they asked me to go back for my 2nd blood test two days later.
But public hospitals here are like: they won't call you after they got the result if they think "there's nothing abnormal/to be concerned" (probably because they think they're too busy to call everyone, even though it's a matter of life of death of an unborn child). And they arranged another vaginal ultrasound checkup for me, but only 3 weeks later (while I saw other patients were having follow up check only 1 week later)... Somehow the way they talked to me was like they're 99% sure that I already had a miscarriage, and the blood test was like just for ruling out eccyesis, while the ultrasound for checking if the lochia would be completely discharged 3 weeks later. To them, early miscarriage was a pretty normal thing and they didn't even care to say anything to console me, not to say trying to help me save my baby (since they didn't think it's still there). But my IVF doctor suggested me to do a few more blood tests else where. So later that week I did one more test outside of hospital, it dropped to a 2-digit level (but still a positive level). The next week, another test on my own, it dropped to <5, which means not pregnant.
FYI: The expected HCG ranges in pregnant women are based on the length of the pregnancy.
- 3 weeks: 5 - 72 mIU/mL.
- 4 weeks: 10 -708 mIU/mL.
- 5 weeks: 217 - 8,245 mIU/mL.
- 6 weeks: 152 - 32,177 mIU/mL.
- 7 weeks: 4,059 - 153,767 mIU/mL.
- 8 weeks: 31,366 - 149,094 mIU/mL.
- 9 weeks: 59,109 - 135,901 mIU/mL.
- 10 weeks: 44,186 - 170,409 mIU/mL.
I actually had kind of accepted the fact that I had lost the baby since I was discharged from the hospital, of course I then spent many days crying and grieving for that... But 3 weeks later when I went back to the hospital for the vaginal ultrasound, I was baffled and shocked to see the doctor (though not the same one who did the check-ups on me two week earlier) assumed that I was going back for a normal prenatal check up. He said my 2nd blood test performed at the hospital showed that my hCG had went up nicely (like doubling that of the 1st test), but it's a result that they didn't inform me of... He thought my baby was developing normally and that I was going back to take a look at my little baby through the ultrasound... I was too confused to react or ask questions at that point, and I just told him that I took more blood tests on my own later on, and my hCG has already dropped to <5 the week before, so the baby had definitely gone... That's when he said, "oh, then unfortunately it's a miscarriage this time."
I only started to think clearly after I stepped out of the doctor's room. And I started to feel sad and feel like crying all over again... because I thought if I was told earlier that my hCG had rose and doubled before, and that the baby was still there at least for a week after I was discharged from the hospital, I could have done something trying to save it (like taking the progesterone shots my IVF doctor prescribed to me). P.S. my bleeding did only started to become heavy and thick one week after hospital, which meant I only really had miscarriage later on, but not on that day I went to the hospital.
Anyway, the die was already cast... I had very bad experiences here, whether it's the IVF clinic or hospital (that's why I did my IVF in Taiwan)... I hope with the EPU in your country that specializes in cases like these, you would just make good use of that and and try save that baby if it's not already too late. Or you can just go see any private doctors who can do more tests and checkups on you even if EPU doesn't.