Trip to the L&D

This morning I woke up in the early hours with some pretty strong pressure waves. I thought they were just braxton hicks and tried to get back to sleep. My back was killing me and it was made worse by the waves. I didn't get back to sleep and was noticing that these waves were quite, quite frequent (far more than 5-6 in an hour). Still, I wasn't timing them and I wasn't especially worried. I went to the gym as soon as it opened (6am) and could still feel the waves.. They were different from the usual BHs I have had for a while.. not just tightening - but also a menstrual like cramp.. The rhythm of the elliptical felt good and after 6 miles - while I was still feeling the waves a LOT - my back was feeling quite a bit better. When I returned home the waves were just as rhythmic and so I decided to time them.

Much to my surprise they were 4 mins apart, around 90 seconds in length. I ate, I drank, I changed what I was doing - and still the same rhythm. All my pregnancy books give indications on how to differentiate real from false labor: for example, false labor waves are inconsistent, they'll change or stop when you eat or drink or change positions and/or activity. So I was very surprised when these were consistently 4 mins apart no matter what I did... The backache was migrating downwards into my hip and wrapping itself around my tummy, so I called the on-call Dr (not wanting to disturb Deb) since I'd been having this same pattern for seeming hours and hours. She was very lovely and asked me to go to L&D.. I felt a bit of a douche going as I wasn't expecting them to be 'true' labor waves given that I could still walk and talk...

But off we went. The nurse there was just WONDERFUL! I told her as we went in that this was no doubt a false alarm (although I have to say the journey in the car to the hospital was extremely uncomfortable) and my contractions would probably stop as soon as they put me on the monitor. I was a bit surprised (and relieved, actually) that I was indeed having waves every 4 minutes... quite consistently. She wanted to see, though, whether these waves were actually dilating to change my cervix. The first check showed that I was dilated to a good 1cm.. and then a few hours later - with the consistent waves I was, yes, about a good 1cm!!

Thus I have been having these waves for 19 hours or so and they have done literally nothing! I mustn't say nothing since they're no doubt warming up my uterus. But, boy, this is going to be a long few days/weeks.

I was discharged. The nurse said I could be back tonight or they could peter out. Right now they're still going, so we shall see. I expect that Poppet is going to take his own sweet time about coming....