February 26 and 27
Casey fell asleep right away but I started feeling my belly tightening pretty frequently. It was happening so often that at 10:30 I decided to start timing things. I timed for about 30 minutes and the contractions were averaging every 5-8 minutes but then fell asleep. I woke up and started timing again but since they weren’t hurting, I wasn’t sure if this was real labor or Braxton Hicks. I went to the bathroom and noticed a little tinge of blood and the rest of my mucous plug that I had been passing since Friday. I decided to call the on-call doctor and find out their thoughts before waking anyone up but when I called, the doctor suggested I head to L&D just to make sure it wasn’t real labor.
At this point, I went ahead and woke poor Casey up who was exhausted from all of the yard work he had done on Sunday and we quickly scrambled trying to get a bag together just in case. My mom had asked me if I had a bag ready the previous week and I didn’t yet because I don’t have a ton of maternity clothes and would have to be constantly swapping things out as they were clean. The only thing that I did have packed was toiletries and the cord blood kit. Then we woke up Brady who woke right up and started talking and singing on the way to the hospital.
On the way to the hospital, the contractions started getting painful. When we got to L&D, we were given a room while they monitored my contractions. I was checked when we first got there by the nurse and she said I was 1cm dilated and 80% effaced. Not much different than my appointment on Tuesday when I was a fingertip dilated and 70% effaced. The nurse monitored my contractions for an hour and I was indeed having them at regular intervals of about 6 minutes but when the hospitalist (doctor on call for the hospital – not from my OB’s office) stopped by and looked at things and what the nurse had reported he said that it sounded like false labor which could go on for the duration of my pregnancy. He didn’t want to check me again but he did want to stop the contractions so he gave me a shot of Terbutaline and then monitored me for another hour before discharging me with an Ambien and telling me what to look for in order to know if it’s real labor or not (the exact same guidelines I was using to go to L&D in the first place – confused).
Since we ended up waiting around a lot we were at the hospital from 1-5a and they had just dosed me with Ambien, I called my mom to see if she could head up to Austin (she watches Brady during my appointments) earlier than usual and watch Brady since I’d likely be knocked out for awhile and Casey had to work. Brady managed to stay awake through all of this and we all passed out in our bed when we got home. Casey and I woke up around 9:45a and Brady woke up 15-20 minutes later. When I woke up I was still having contractions that I could feel but they weren’t too uncomfortable…yet.