Don’t squeeze the baby!
So I’ve been having these weird tightening sensations on and off for about 4 days now. Sometimes they’re so strong that my whole belly actually changes shape and gets so hard that I feel like if I rapped on it with my knuckles, it’d ring like a bell. I timed them a couple days ago and they came fairly regularly for about two hours, but then got irregular again, so I didn’t think much of it (though I have to admit, I was getting kind of excited there for a while).
But it’s still happening intermittently a few days later. Josh suggested I go in for a checkup, especially since his last man-hurrah was scheduled for this weekend: six hours away in the bowels of the earth for three days, out of all cell phone range and no way to contact him. So I overcame my reluctance to waste the doctor’s time and got myself checked out this morning… though there’s nothing quite so embarrassing as having to repeat to a series of receptionists that I want to come in so someone can have a go at my cervix.
Of course the feelings stopped as soon as I got to the office. I was there for an hour or so and got all examined up… nothing. No change, no dilation, nothing. Sigh. Then they decided to put me on a monitor for half an hour anyway, and I didn’t feel a thing the whole time. The doctor came back in and I apologized for having wasted her time. She took a look at the printout and said that actually I’d been having contractions every five minutes.
Whoa.
So it’s not actual labor since nothing else is happening and the contractions aren’t getting any bigger, but she said that it could turn into real labor any time from this weekend to several weeks from now. (We are supposed to hope that it doesn’t happen this weekend, because Taco needs her last month to cook). She wanted me to come back in on Monday and get checked out again (gah) so it seems she thinks it’s serious. Though if it’s been going on for four days and nothing has happened so far… I am hopeful, and dubious, and excited, and terrified, and feeling guilty about having having spent the last week doing projects I really shouldn’t have been doing, like regrouting the shower and building raised garden beds with lots and lots of 8-foot beams that I carried away from the city dump like a swollen he-man.
Kitty seems to find it all entrancing. Instead of being his usual aloof self, is constantly next to me. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe I should pack my hospital bag in spite of my doubts.
Poor Josh, no man-hurrah. 