Any moment now

So I guess I’m in pre-labor.  When it will cross the bridge into actual labor-labor, well, your guess is as good as mine!  I kind of think it’s going to be today.

I had been having irregular contractions all week this week.  After the first day or so of that, I quickly learned this could go on for who knows how long, and that I shouldn’t be ready to drop everything and go to the hospital just yet.  But the contractions started to get regular.  On Wednesday and Thursday they were consistently between 20 and 30 minutes apart all day.  On Friday morning they were between 5 and 10.  I had an OB appointment scheduled, so we went in and he checked me.  I was 1 cm dilated (finally!) and very thinned out and soft.  He said he thought it would probably happen later that day, or Saturday.

He hooked me up to the monitor and it caught even more contractions than the ones I was feeling.  Our chickpea’s heartbeat was strong and he was moving quite a bit.  We had another ultrasound, which showed that my fluid levels are off the charts amazing, and our baby is quite large (current estimate from the technician is 8 lb. 12 oz., but she admits that may be slightly off as these estimates are just that – estimates).

Yesterday we ate a spicy lunch and then had that chocolate labor cake (sooo delicious).  I tried sitting on the ball, walking around a bit, resting a lot.  We even played video games (which often gets my adrenaline pumping for whatever reason) and watched Road house. Ha.  Nothing doing.

Now we continue to wait.  Last night we were timing them the best we could, though sometimes it was hard because what seemed like a 5 minute long contraction, we would realize must have actually been two short ones right on top of each other.  (For those who are uninitiated in timing contractions, you are supposed to time from the beginning of one to the beginning of the next one, NOT the gap between them – so it is virtually impossible if you can’t tell when one ends and another begins).  But on average my contractions were about 6 minutes apart all evening.  My doctor had told us that when they are 5 minutes apart for an hour, consistently, then we should call.  And I didn’t want to err on the side of coming in unnecessarily, so we didn’t call.  We went to bed and for a while John kept a hand on my belly to continue timing the contractions so I could try to sleep.  They slowed down a bit to every 10 minutes, but they were pretty intense ones and woke me up almost every time.

Last night was a rough one, let me tell you.  When they continued to be about 10 minutes apart, we stopped timing them.  But I woke up at 3 AM and found myself watching the clock for about an hour, timing them in my head – and still they were about 8 to 10 minutes apart.  When I finally got up this morning it felt like I was just having one long continuous one, so who knows?  Timing these suckers is harder than I thought it would be.

We are officially on babywatch.  And attempting to time impossible-to-time contractions.   All I know is I am going to meet my little boy very soon, and I seriously can’t wait!

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