False Labor!

Alright! I'm back from the hospital and all is well. I didn't get much sleep last night (as you well know) but I managed at least a good solid hour before my husband's alarm went off at 6:00 AM. When he groggily reached for the snooze button, I let him know how I was feeling and that I would still like to go to the hospital just for good measure. I think I knew that I wasn't really having a baby, but during the night I had attempted to feel the baby move around and wasn't able to, due to the contractions I was having. He said that was fine, and for me to get up and get ready to go. So while he snatched a few more minutes of sleep, I got up and started the car, and called the after-hours nurse to let them know that I would be coming in, just for a quick check-up. I was a bit shocked to discover that no one actually answers the phone, you just leave a callback number and the nurse will call you back within 10 minutes to see what you needed. And the nurse never called me. So the nurse at the Women and Children's Center had NO idea that I would be arriving, which turns out not to have mattered at all because by then it was already 7:00 AM and the building was beginning to come to life for the day.

First things first, before being seen at all, I needed to preregister. I had tried to do it online (as the paper I was originally given at my very first doctors appointment assured me I could do) but the preregistration page was offline and hadn't been fixed in the last 9 months. It wasn't a big deal though. I simply filled out a piece of paperwork, handed over my license and insurance card, and answered a myriad of questions regarding allergies, medications, and any sort of medical issues I may have had during the pregnancy.

I was then led back into a Labor/Delivery/Recovery room and connected to two monitors: one for the baby's heartrate and one for contractions. I also had my heartrate and bloodpressure checked every half hour for what felt like forever, but I believe it was really only an hour. I was VERY happy to hear and see my baby's heartbeat, and he even began to start moving around again, so I felt him as well. I had been so worried at first that my blood pressure was a bit high the first time they took it, and had to take it again a few minutes later just to make sure I was okay! Haha. According to the monitor, I WAS having contractions, but most of them were still practice "Braxton Hicks" contractions. The only real contractions I was having were the ones that were painful, and those were scattered randomly throughout the practice ones. Because of the random and distant pattern to the real contractions, what I was having was considered False Labor. Still, I was told that it is ALWAYS better to come in and get checked out just to be safe than to stay at home and have something go wrong (like having a baby in the living room or something).

The doctor soon came in and did an internal exam, assuring me that everything was fine and the baby was as strong and healthy as ever. He said that although I didn't seem to have progressed since my last checkup, he still wanted me to come in for my weekly appointment tomorrow afternoon, and he will keep my induction scheduled for Friday morning. I did however learn one new piece of information: my baby is at station -2. That was the only thing I didn't know until today, is his station. Based on that, he's really not ready to come out today after all (which is a good thing, because today is Monday. House comes on today, and I really hate missing an episode of House!). I was given a discharge paper and instructions for when to next come in (same as last time, if I'm bleeding, if my water breaks, or if I'm having painful contractions 5-7 minutes apart for an hour or two). If I don't have the baby by Thursday night, then Friday morning at midnight I am to stop eating and drinking, and at 6:00 AM I am to show up at Labor and Delivery to be induced. I don't see it as much of an induction really, as I do a speeding up process. I'm already dilating and effacing, so at this point the baby IS ready to come out. He's just taking his time and mommy is running out of patience! :)

So I went back to the lobby and gathered my hubby and son. I am SO proud of little David for being so well-behaved in the waiting room for so long! The hubby had time to consider going back to work after missing so much of the morning already, and also knowing that we still had a long drive back home, so he decided to go ahead and use his floating holiday and stay home today. We picked up a McDonald's breakfast and hit the road, and finally we are back home and I can relax, knowing that one way or another I will be having this baby within a few days and there is nothing to worry about.

I am EXHAUSTED after getting almost no sleep, so I might go ahead and rest for a while. I just wanted you to know that I am doing just fine, and the baby is perfectly fine and healthy as well. Hopefully the next time I post about the baby, it will be the joyous news that he has finally arrived! Although if I have to go in Friday morning, I may end up posting about how I'm feeling during an induction (or about my anxiety just before an induction!) but we will just have to wait and see. Here's hoping that the next time I think I'm in labor, I really am!