This is NOT it!

Contractions started earlier tonight (Tuesday) but were pretty irregular, not any more intense than usual, and went away almost immediately after I lay down. I went to bed and woke up about 45 minutes later and they were back! This time a little more intense and much more regular - every 3-5 minutes with almost exactly 4 minutes between each one.

Waited an hour and called the hospital just before midnight and got a call back from the doctor on call. Now this was weird...she says, "Well if you feel like you need to be seen, go to Woman's and they'll take a look at you." Oh, thanks.

Squeezed in what I thought would be a final belly shot. 34 weeks 6 days.

We got Maddex out of bed (thankfully she went down perfectly tonight) and took her over to Mitch's parents (where she again decided it's time to party in the middle of the night). I cried when we dropped her off thinking that would be the last time she was my baby!

Late night party with CeCe. No one got any sleep :(

Checked in at the assessment center and the doc popped in to basically tell me probably going to be sent home. I felt like I've got to be in labor, so this was shocking to me and very discouraging. They took me back to a room (same one as last week actually), got me gowned up, and he checked me. I'm 2-3 cm, so we waited a couple of hours to monitor contractions and see if I dilate any further. Thankfully, during this time the babies look great! Unfortunately, we are exhausted and uncomfortable!!! Neither of us have gotten much sleep from last night and now Mitch is stuck in a chair and I'm on this awful stretcher. My contractions continued to be pretty intense. They seemed to come real close together, then take a break, then back close together.

Mitch was eventually able to entertain himself by creating this lovely artwork. (Notice our room number is 1102...Mitch's bday is 11/02 so I call this the birthday room. It also did not have a working TV. We totally could have watched I am Number Four!)

After a couple of hours, the nurse checked me & said I'm 3 cm. But apparently that's not enough change to show that I'm in active labor so they want to send me home. They offer a shot of pain meds to help with the contractions. I gladly accepted at that point because there's no way I could sleep with those contractions. They keep me another hour during which I felt totally loopy and itchy. At about 5:00, they sent me on home.

I was able to sleep for a few hours, but woke up with contractions again around 9:30. They've pretty much continued like they did in the hospital last night - a few close together and then a break. I'm waiting to hear from the doctor if there's anything I can take to help manage the pain at home until I'm in active labor. So, of course one of my fears has come true! I'm just stuck having these contractions without knowing if/when I'm in real labor! UGH!!! Please pray that either my water would break or these contractions will just GO AWAY!


Author's Note: I started drafting this post last night when I was certain that I was in labor. It was originally titled "This is it!" but, unfortunately, I had to update the title.