False Labor is a Bitch

I had a terrible night trying to sleep this past Wednesday. I must have tossed and turned about 20 times. When I finally got up in the morning, I went to work as usual. I noticed pretty quickly after getting to work that my lower back was aching quite a bit (which is really atypical for me) and I was having very low, menstrual-like cramping. I dismissed these symptoms as being caused by my crappy night, but started getting nervous when I realized that I hadn't felt the baby move in a long time. So I called the doctor's office and after some phone discussions, they wanted to bring me in for some monitoring. Luckily, the doctor is 4 blocks away and it was easy to go and I was happy to have some reassurance that the baby was okay.

So I got on the belly monitor and the baby was perfect. His heart beat was in the 150s and steady and strong. The nurse also commented that she could see that he was moving around just fine, but I still didn't feel it. It also appeared that I was having real contractions every 2-3 minutes! So I was getting quite nervous because (a) I hadn't even reached 37 weeks and wasn't quite "full term" and (b) I hadn't even packed my bag for the hospital. I was also wondering how I could possibly be in real labor given that the baby wasn't even engaged at my Tuesday appointment.

After 20 minutes of monitoring, the midwife gave me an internal exam (which I must say was NOT comfortable) and my cervix was completely closed and long. Nothing going on there. Given that and the fact that I wasn't having real pain with my contractions (they were merely uncomfortable), she thought that the contractions were being caused by dehydration and sent me home with the instructions to drink a lot. So my dear husband picked me up at work and the first thing we did when we got home was to pack the hospital bag! I also took a bath and started drinking. Around 8 pm, the contractions were still going good and strong and so I talked to the midwife on call at Brigham and Women's. She told me that I needed to keep drinking AND get the pressure off my cervix by lying on my side and getting my feet up. Oh. The midwife at my doctor's office didn't tell me that! After 90 minutes of doing that, the contractions started slowing down and I actually had a pretty decent night of sleep last night (except for the tossing and turning that is now typical of my 3rd trimester sleep). I did notice at least 2 contractions in the middle of the night, but since I've been awake this morning, I haven't noticed any. I'm working from home today and will remember to drink lots of water! This baby needs to bake a little bit more!