HCG blood tests

[kitkat2024]

I’m sorry to be posting so much but I have no one else to ask about these things. This is my first pregnancy - no history of conceiving before.

i am 15DPO and got my positive yesterday - a nice strong line on a clearblue test. I naively assumed that miscarriage always involved bleeding so each day I get through without bleeding is a positive sign. However, chat gpt says this isn’t the case.

is it worth doing hcg blood tests 48 hours apart to check that I am definitely still pregnant (as hcg can remain post miscarriage) and that everything is going as it should?

I really wouldn’t recommend it. It will give you reassurance and peace for a day, until the anxiety creeps in again, and then you’re doing tests everyday looking for progression etc. I know, from personal experience, how hard this time is. Until you get to 6-7weeks and you can have a scan and see the sac/fetal pole and hear the heartbeat etc, but then the worry creeps in if everything is okay with the baby etc. For me the anxiety didn’t really calm down until I could feel baby moving, that gave me peace of mind and made it easier to hold out between scans. This pregnancy and motherhood journey is a rollercoaster, a beautiful one, but crazy too. The only thing I would recommend is booking a scan for 6-7 weeks if your midwife doesn’t do one at that time, for reassurance that the position is good and that it’s a viable pregnancy. Then try to relax and enjoy! Wishing you lots of luck 🍀 & peace ☮️💕

You could but then after the 48h blood test the only way to know you are still pregnant is to then have another 48h later and then another

The early weeks are tough with not knowing what the situation is. You could do early reassurance scans but they would only tell you that at that moment in time you are still pregnant and you could lose the baby on the drive back home. Some of the companies are better than others and on one of the pregnancy threads I was on a woman was told at a private scan she had lost her baby and needed to be seen in the epu. An emotionally testing 24h later she was scanned at the epu and there was a beautiful heartbeat with no issues. On the flip side they can say everything is fine when actually the baby is measuring behind and unlikely to be viable.

I had two miscarriages last year and one was out of the blue, I just started bleeding at 10 weeks. The second I was having scans at the epu and we could see that the baby wasn't growing at the right pace and I again miscarried at 10 weeks but it took until 9 weeks for the scan to show no heartbeat. I think it's likely something similar happened with the first pregnancy I lost so having those early scans didn't make much difference to the physical outcome of the pregnancy although I did have that insight that it wasn't going in the right direction. It was a lot of watch and wait which was in some ways as difficult as being in the dark. Unfortunately until you get to your dating scan the pregnancy can go either way. You just have to be cautious optimistic

Thanks @Superscientistand @Kaybee1989, it’s so hard isn’t it? @Kaybee1989im sorry for your losses. So it’s possible I could miscarry at this stage and not even bleed so I wouldn’t know? That is such a scary thought

Unfortunately anything can happen at any point and yes that’s very scary. But if you spend your time worrying about everything that could go wrong it will make for a stressful time.

I have had three missed miscarriages now. I had blood tests 48 hours apart in all of them and my HCG was perfect. My home tests all got nice and dark quickly. No bleeding. Each time I had a scan at around 7 weeks it showed that the embryo had stopped growing earlier and there was no heartbeat. Once I had a scan at 6 weeks and there was a slow heartbeat but embryo was measuring 5 weeks. A week later there was no heartbeat and still measured 5 weeks. Twice I started to miscarry naturally within 2 weeks of the scans. Another time I waited until 10 weeks and still no bleeding so I needed to have surgery to remove the embryo which had stopped growing at 5 weeks. My HCG remained high the whole time and in fact was still getting positive pregnancy tests 5 weeks after the surgery.

So quite honestly I agree with others here. While blood tests or scans can reassure sure temporarily, because anything can happen at any point you likely won’t feel reassured for long. Really all you can do is remember plenty of women have babies every day and everything is fine.

Unfortunately that is the case. In my second loss the heartbeat stopped sometime between 7.5 and 9 weeks and the bleeding didn't start until over 10 weeks. In some pregnancies you won't bleed and the loss of the pregnancy is only observed at the dating scan and needs medical management to bring about the physical miscarriage.

You can tie yourself up in 1000 knots thinking about the whatifs. It can be a real test on your anxious mind. The motto that gets shared is "today I'm pregnant". It is a fine balancing act between being positive and being realistic that the pregnancy potentially might not make it to 12 weeks. The first trimester is the highest risk time for pregnancy loss but there is still many more pregnancies that survive and become healthy bouncing babies.

Please try not to get too caught up in the ‘what if’s’ like a PP said. I used to be so anxious about being pregnant. We had been trying for over 3 years and went through IVF in the end. I would be constantly looking at a certain website that would tell you the possible chance of miscarriage day-by-day depending on your info… it was a double edged sword to be honest. And those that are worriers, like myself, will worry no matter what and the pregnancy hormones don’t help! For me after getting to 13 weeks, I then worried about the genetic abnormality tests, then when that was fine I worried about the morphology scan at 20 weeks, then when that’s okay and I felt baby move I worried that she moved too much or not enough! 😣🫣 Try to enjoy being pregnant, as long as it may last. What will be, will be. There’s not much you can do to change it and hopefully this time next year you’ll be wiping bums and wishing for a full nights sleep! 🍀💖

I think you need to just enjoy your positive test! It was only yesterday, be happy you’re pregnant otherwise you won’t be able to enjoy your pregnancy. If you have to risk factors the try to relax