Positive but lower HCG levels

[Debb88]

Hi lovely ladies,

So we go through the 2ww well I am actually 9dp5dt and we weren’t given a positive test!! But they said my HCG levels were sitting low at 34 😢 they have doubled my progrestrone. Has anyone had success with lower levels and a viable pregnancy?

[Patches86]

Firstly, congrats! Secondly, my hcg was 31 and had very low progesterone (around the same time as you), I was worried but the important bit is that your hcg doubles in 48 hours, mine had gone up to 110 in that time even though I thought there would be no hope and just kept climbing from there. And cyclogest helped up my progesterone. I’m sadly going through an ectopic pregnancy (but that’s nothing to do with the low start of hcg). Good luck!

[Debb88 in reply to Patches86]

I am so sorry to hear about your ectopic, I hope you are ok, sending you lots of healing vibes xxx

Thank you for the reassurance that makes me feel a bit better, we used donor eggs and this is my first go so it’s all very new!! The nurse made it sound it very bad.

I guess time will tell xxx

[LCharlton]

Hi Debb, so sorry to hear you're dealing with this. Low HCG definitely can be a sign that something isn't right - but if that's the case, it would be a sign of the embryo/pregnancy not ultimately being viable (like with Patches' case where it was ectopic which does cause low HCG, or my own case where the embryo wasn't chromosomally normal and I miscarried at 8 weeks), so if you did miscarry it would be something that was unavoidable because of problems with the embryo. On the other hand, some people do have initial low HCG levels but a normal pregnancy. There's no way to know right now what's going on so unfortunately all you can do is hang in there and wait to see which way things go. I know what a difficult time it is. Do keep looking after yourself and we all send you lots of love and luck xx

[LCharlton in reply to LCharlton]

And having said that - I just checked and actually my initial low HCG result was 40 at 11dp5dt - so with 31 at 9dp5dt you're actually doing quite a bit better than I was, assuming that you'll have gone up to about 60 by 11dp5dt. It might all be absolutely fine, but unfortunately you're going to have to wait till around week 6 when they can see it on a scan before you really know what's going on xx

[Debb88]

Thank you so much for your reply!! I guess time will tell what is really going on. I think this waiting time is the longest of all the things we have to go through. Sending lots of baby dust your way xxx