no baby yet

At lunch time yesterday I had a very strange contraction that didn't seem to want to go away.  This was after a morning full of irregular contractions.  Then I felt a small trickle and thought my water had broken.  I called the doctor and they wanted to see me whenever I could get there.  Mom and I called Jonathan and met him at the doctor's office.

When the PA there checked me she said there had definitely been some change in my cervix.  She didn't say exactly how thinned out it was but she did say that the baby's head had come way down and that I was now dilated to 5cm.  She said they would do a test to see if my membranes had ruptured and that she thought they might be sending me on to the hospital.

Well, the test was negative.  She checked with the doctor on call and he said that I should go home and wait for the contractions to become regular.  I was disappointed but I guess not too surprised.  I was more irritated at the PA who told me on the way out the door, "See you next week!"

I apologize to those of you who heard we were headed to the hospital.  We weren't ever told to go on to the hospital, probably because I'm not 39 weeks yet and also because my water hasn't officially broken.

From the minute I got in the car I started having a lot more contractions.  They became regular and were starting across my lower abdomen and back then spreading up to the rest of my belly.  They were a lot stronger than what I had previously been experiencing and felt like bad menstrual cramps.  Again, I started thinking, "This is the real deal" and I was just waiting for my water to break.

This continued until I decided to call the doctor's office again before they closed.  I called around 4:20 and the nurse said they'd seen the last patient for the day already.  She asked many questions and couldn't determine if I was in true active labor or not and she told me that it was my call about going to the hospital or not.

I knew that I didn't want to get to the hospital and then be sent home and I also know that I don't want them to have to give me Pitocin to speed up my labor so I decided to wait some more.  We went to the fair to walk around some and then entire time I was having strong contractions about 5 minutes apart.  They definitely felt better when I was walking as opposed to when I was sitting down so I kept walking.

On the way home Julianna started saying she felt sick.  I immediately assumed it was a ploy for a little attention since she certainly knew that something was going on with mom, but instead when we took her temperature at 9pm last night it was 103 degrees.

After a rough night of vomiting, fever, motrin, tylenol, and me trying to avoid close contact with my baby girl we decided to ask my mom to take her to the doctor this morning to get checked for the flu.  She has not had the flu shot yet and although I have, I have not had the H1N1 vaccination yet and the doctors keep stressing to me that I need to get it as soon as it is available and to call them if I think I've had any exposure to the virus.  We figured it would be better to find out for sure if that's what Julianna has or not.

Jonathan wins the dad of the year award for going to the fair when he most certainly didn't want to after a long day of work where his wife made him run around the country after another false alarm and also for getting up and tending to the sick 3.5 year old.  My mom wins the mother of the year award for taking a sick grandchild to the doctor so I could stay away.

Now I've had regular contractions for many, many hours (even though they do slow down when I lay down) but no ruptured membranes so the waiting game begins again.  I'll be posting anytime something happens around here so stay tuned!