False Labor Sucks

Yup. The title basically says it all. I went grocery shopping yesterday afternoon and my belly was contracted the whole time. After I got home, I went to my uncle's house to help with some campaign stuff and had BH contractions the whole time about 25-30 minutes apart. They weren't painful but noticeable. After that I went to watch Bill's softball game (they beat the number 1 team!) and the contractions started to intensify and come more frequently. I wasn't timing them but I'd guess about every 10 minutes or so. When we got home, I put some final touches on my hospital bag just in case, and went to bed.

I woke up at 1am with extreme lower back pain and intense, period-like, cramps in my lower abdomen. It didn't come in waves like contractions are supposed to, it was constant. This lasted for about an hour and no amount of moving around or bouncing on my birthing ball made it go away. Bill got up at 2am to go to work and asked if he should go. I kind of broke down because I didn't know. I was pretty sure this was it but I wasn't ready to go to the hospital. He was scheduled to ride with another driver today so we decided that he should go to work and just drive his car to all of the stops behind the truck and if I needed him home, he could come.

After he left for work, I started to have contractions. I timed them for an hour and they ranged from 4 1/2 and 8 1/2 minutes apart. They were painful but not unbareable. I decided to keep timing and see if they became more intense in the second hour. They didn't. In fact, they went away. I went to sleep and only woke up 2 times with contractions. I've been up for about an hour now and I've had 2 contractions.

I'm 38 weeks today and while I know I'm supposed to say that I want our little boy to stay in as long as he needs, I am ready for him to come out after last night. I can handle the contractions if I know that it will result in me holding our little guy but contractions that just disappear? Not fun. I go to the doctor tomorrow and we'll see what they say. My mom told me that when she was pregnant with my sister, this happened to her for 2 days before she gave birth. We'll see!