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This has been one of the craziest and most difficult weeks I've had for a long time. I was due to get my period last Saturday but it never came. Each day I took pregnancy tests and each day they came back with lines so faint that I thought I must be imagining them. Every day I expected my period to start. Finally I went and bought some really sensitive tests (the ones I was using I bought from a site called saveontests.com - 25 tests for approx NZ$18). That one came up with a faint but distinct line. The same morning I went to the doctor and got a blood test to confirm the result. My levels of hcg (the hormone you start producing once the embryo implants) were 52. Anything over 5 is considered to indicate pregnancy but 52 is very low. However, if the number doubles in 48 hours its a sign that everything is on track. I went and got another blood test yesterday and the hcg was 110. I started looking at pregnancy books on Trademe. I looked on the internet for midwives. My estimated due date was 21 September.

This morning I started bleeding. We went to the after-hours clinic on Adelaide Rd. The doctor told us this was called 'threatened miscarriage'. When she examined my abdomen there was tenderness on one side. She was worried about ectopic pregnancy (when the embryo implants in a fallopian tube) which can be life-threatening and sent me to the hospital for a scan. The gynecological registrar said my hcg numbers were too low to see anything on a can but he took another blood test and sent us away for two hours. When we came back he told me the hcg had dropped to 80. He told me it was very likely the pregnancy was failing. Basically, barring some kind of miracle recovery, the pregnancy is over. They will keep monitoring my hcg levels until they go below 5 again.

I only knew I was pregnant for three days. I was only just starting to believe it was real. Now its hard to believe this has happened. Its all feeling a bit surreal.

There are some positives here.

We got pregnant naturally once, so its likely we will be able to again. Maybe I don't have to plan for fertility treatment after all.

It wasn't an ectopic pregnancy and so my fallopian tubes remain intact and functional.

I think its better it happened earlier, while its painful and I think it would have been more painful if this had happened at 8 or 10 weeks of pregnancy (technically I was 5 weeks pregnant - they count from the first day of your last period). Also at this point its more of an emotional than a physical trauma.

I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend at home under my duvet reading books and maybe doing a spot of knitting. Love to you all and for those of you who live nearby, hope to see you in the real world sometime soon.