Practice makes perfect
Around 4pm yesterday (about the time I started the previous blog entry ;-)) I started getting braxton hicks contractions. Nothing really out of the ordinary happened to bring them on - and nothing ever needs to - they tend to start whenever. I didn't think much of it at all as I'm very used to them having been getting them every day for many weeks now, but by 5pm when they were still occurring and were feeling slightly stronger than normal (not painful by any means at all, but just more... thorough... if that makes any sense) I decided to try lying down, drinking some water, and timing them. According to all the stuff our doctor gave us, if I experience more than 4 in an hour before 37 weeks ("pre-term") I should call in and let them know about it. Well, I had 6 between 5 and 6pm, approx every 10 minutes apart. That combined with some other... ahem... changes... I had noticed recently (but that definitely qualifies as TMI for this blog!) made me decide to call the 24-hour healthline for our dr's office to see if there was anything I needed to be concerned about.
I called and explained what I was experiencing, and they decided they wanted me to come in for some observation just to be on the safe side. Then I called Tim at work to let him know what was up, told him not to panic - that I wasn't in pain and that they weren't getting more frequent or more intense but they wanted to just check me out anyway and promised to call him again after the tests - and I went in to the hospital.
When I arrived they checked me in, took a urine sample, and strapped an external fetal monitor on me, as well as a monitor for the contractions. The nurses were all quite nice, although slightly disorganized as it was shift change (7pm is when the night shift comes on) but things settled down quickly. Of course Murphy's Law would normally dictate that the contractions that had now been occurring for the last two hours would stop now that I was being "observed" so as they were strapping the contraction monitor on me I was silently hoping to myself "PLEASE let me have at least 1 contraction while I'm here or they'll think I'm a complete dork. Please, just one... even a little one"). Murphy must have been listening because they continued about 10 minutes apart the whole hour that I was there so I didn't look like a completely neurotic and pathological first-time mom-to-be! They were definitely real, and happening just like I had said. But thankfully they didn't change in frequency or intensity (We're really not ready for her to come early and I made her promise that she would wait until at least 37 weeks anyway ;-)).
After about an hour of observing Baby Girl (who put on a great show for the nurse, with a nice strong heartbeat exhibiting lots of little activity peaks as she wiggled and squirmed the entire time), observing my uterus and contraction patterns, conducting an exam and finding my cervix still closed (yeah I know - sharing that tidbit of info begs the question "so where exactly IS the line of TMI for this blog"... hey... it's at my descretion ;-)) and getting back a negative result on my urine test for amniotic fluids, they sent me home.
The contractions continued on at home for some time and gradually decreased in frequency. I was still having them when Tim got home, but not as often, and eventually they stopped for a while as I fell asleep for the night. Now they're back to their regular random occurrances ;-)
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