Re: Why I'm still pregnant.

As you may have deduced from the title of this post (you magically super deducer you!)  I am still "with child", and am not yet, you know, with child.

Contractions started around 4pm yesterday, and around 9:30pm, when they'd gotten consistently at around 3-4 minutes apart, we decided to head for the hospital.  I was in very little pain, but just the same, I'd been having contractions from 3-7 minutes apart for 5 1/2 hours, which was a good deal more than the "1-2 hours at 5 minutes apart" that my doctor had instructed me just a few days before.  So we packed our suitcase into the car and headed out for our 5 minute drive to the hospital, plus short "oops, that side of the hospital is closed, please go around" stroll in the rain.

So we get there, I get weighed in (190.  TERRIFYING, but it was night time, and I was fully dressed and... and I don't like to think about it.) changed, questioned within an inch of my life, and strapped down into the cozy hospital bed, and it's time to get checked.  Sure enough, contractions are, in fact, happening between 3-4 minutes apart.  Which is good, because up till that point, I was convinced I was being crazy, or that the contractions would immediately stop when someone else started monitoring them, and the fact that we were showing with a suitcase like we expected to move in or something would make our inevitable walk of shame away from the hospital later that night all the more shameful.

But no worries, I WAS in fact having consistent contractions every 3-4 minutes.  Booyah, I wasn't crazy!

So next step: "The Check".  How far along WAS I, exactly?  What exactly were those contractions doing for me and and when could they get us a room?

Results?  60% effaced, 1 1/2 centimeters dilated.  So basically: contracting, yes.  "In labor"... debatable.  But because of my super quick labor with baby 1, the doctor decided I should "walk".  So up we go, around and around the teacup sized nursing station in the center of labor and delivery, between 11pm and midnight, turning the same direction enough times to feel dizzy from it.  During our stroll, we made a command decision:  If this was not going to happen, if they were going to walk of shame us out of that hospital in the middle of the night, we were definitely, without a doubt, going to Denny's for middle of the night food.  It was going to be delicious and awesome and exactly like being young and impulsive and in college again.  And seriously, what better way to celebrate being in pretend labor than that?

So eventually, after our hour was up, I waddled back to be further examined.  New results:  TWO and half centimeters dilated, 70, no we changed our minds, 80% effaced.  So what does that mean exactly?  It means that the doctor gets to decide my fate.  And that fate was that it was time to go home, after having some sort of sleeping pill practically forcibly inserted down my throat. "I don't know that I want to take that..." "No no, it's better.   You need to get rest, and if you get to where you're in a ton of pain, it won't work anyway.  You need it."  So terrifying nurse Nazi won out (that's not really fair, she was a fine nurse), and I took the blue pill.  As I am still in a drunken stupor today, I'll say I regret this particular piece of advice.  Also, as we stumbled into bed around 2am, about 10 minutes after that pill had begun to take effect, I'm pretty sure I declared a war on pants.  I couldn't figure which side was front and I was confused and tired and frustrated and decided that pants were far too complicated to be worth anything they had to offer.

So now it's Saturday.  Saturday afternoon and, it would seem, labor took a vacation.  Sometime during the night my contractions quit out, which may have been a wonderful gift, as feeling drugged out from the stupid pill would have made labor much more difficult than if I, say, simply hadn't slept all night.  I'm not sure exactly what to do with myself, I don't know how long labor vacations typically last.  I've been pretty well assured that I won't last till my due date, but I may very well go to my next OB appointment, this coming Monday morning.

As for now, I'm ready for another painful walk.  Let's see if we can't get this sucker started back up again.  I haven't been feeling the need to have an early labor, but after last night's escapades, I feel like I deserve to see my little boy now.

So have a wonderful weekend, friends.  Hope your trials and tribulations all end in massive amounts of joy!