Labor Pains

With a normal pregnancy I might be feeling very frustrated right now, but not today. Today I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet.
It all started yesterday, the family laid down for an afternoon nap. The boys went right to sleep, which was a pleasant surprise. So Tom and I took full advantage of the uninterrupted time before falling asleep ourselves. The problem was I couldn’t fall asleep. It was around 3:30 and I just felt terribly uncomfortable. Finally I got up and took a bath, thinking that would help to ease my pains, not really acknowledging what those pains were.
Then I went in to wake up Tom and told him I thought I was having contractions. He was pretty sleepy, I felt guilty waking him up. But when I screeched at him for touching my stomach during a contraction, he said I needed to go into the hospital.
I so did not want to go in, so I decided to call the doctor first and see what he said. He was super wishy washy on the phone and pretty much left it up to me on whether or not I should go in. I hate making decisions! So I decided to start making dinner, with Tom’s help of course.
After dinner I laid on the couch and started to realize that they were pretty close together, so on the basis of better safe than sorry we decided to go into the hospital.
Dropped the kids off at a friend’s house and drove to the hospital. You have no idea how annoying pot holes and bad weather are in a car until you drive over them while in labor. Let’s just say that Tom is a very patient man with me.
At the hospital I got hooked up to the monitors and the contractions were intense, coming every three to four minutes and getting harder. Tom and I looked at each other and silently freaked out. Hello! We are so not prepared to have this baby tonight!!
After awhile the nurse decided to check my cervix. With the first try she couldn’t find it, and that’s when I sighed in relief thinking, I’m not having this baby tonight, thank goodness! I didn’t stay happy for long because she called in reinforcements to help her out with the cervix finding. Yeah…not pleased about this one. The second lady looked like a gentle girl that is until she tried to stick her fist up inside me for the hunt! Holy crap! Tom looked horrified, and I just felt violated. In the end I was only at 1 centimeter.
NEVER have I had a pregnancy like this one. After the nightmare of cervix checking was over the contractions slowed down and calmed down and eventually ebbed out completely. I have never had false labor, never not dilated to at least a three a month before labor. It’s all so odd to me.
So we stayed there for another hour and a half to make sure everything was really stopping and then we were released.
Once home I was up several times in the night with hard contractions, but nothing ever picked up consistently and I’ve been perfectly fine since this morning.
So I feel relieved that I have not had the baby, but I’m scared that he’s going to come sooner than Cyndee can arrive. She comes on the 12th, a week and a half, I’m hoping to hold out. Tom is hoping for that too, he’s kind of freaking out. I’m not aloud to do anything today, no laundry or cleaning, he’s so afraid of the baby coming sooner than Spring Break. Can’t blame him though, midterms are a week and a half away. So we’ll see what we can do!