2nd Trip to Labor & Delivery Triage

Yesterday, I had fairly regular contractions starting at around dinner time, but I was purposefully ignoring them. I didn't time them or count them, but they were increasing in intensity and seemed to be coming about every 10 minutes or so.

Last night, around 10:00 PM, they got more intense and closer together. I was still determined to ignore them for as long as possible, because I didn't want to go to the hospital too early and be sent home.

Around midnight, Kevin suggested that we go to bed. He figured that I would either wake him up when I could no longer stand it, and then we would go to the hospital, or I would fall asleep and that would be the end of it.

I never really fell asleep, and at 1:45 am, I had to get out of bed because I was nauseous. I realized once I got up that the contractions had changed in frequency and duration. They were basically lasting forever, with little rest between them.

I decided to time some. Here is what I wrote down last night:

Contraction: 1:59 am - ? (I was sure that I was missing something, so I decided to wait for my belly to get soft and try again.)

Contraction: 2:07 am - 2:15 am - ? (I still wasn't sure that a contraction could last that long.)

Contraction: 2:21 am - 2:44 am (Now I was starting be sure. This contraction lasted for 23 minutes!)

Contraction: 2:45 am - 2:57 am (Only one minute of rest!)

Contraction: 2:59 am - 3:09 am (Ten minutes of rock hard belly and difficulty breathing.)

Contraction: 3:09 am - 3:17 am (Less than a minute of rest before this one started...)

I stopped keeping track at this point, because I was pretty sure that my mom was going to be arriving soon to keep an eye on Connor while we went to the hospital. Although the contractions weren't too terribly painful (I'd rate them a 5 on a scale from 1 to 10), I was concerned about them lasting for so long.

The last two times I was in the hospital during this pregnancy, the discharge instructions told me to come in right away if I experienced an "Abdomen that feels continually 'rock hard.'" I was pretty sure that this fit the bill, and I hadn't felt Lex move at all since I had gotten out of bed, and he is a *very* active baby.

We had the nicest nurse ever in triage at the hospital, and the staff doctor was a really great guy, too. I think they could see how disappointed I was that I wasn't actually in labor or going to have Lex last night, because they kept reassuring me that I did the right thing in coming to the hospital to have Lex monitored during these really long contractions. Lex did great during the non stress test, and my contractions eventually got back into a more normal pattern, just one that wasn't going to be progressing my labor right then. Around 5:30 am, they sent us home.

I was so tired since I hadn't slept in 24 hours, and was so disappointed, and just emotional from being pregnant, that I bawled in the elevator on the way to the car (and in the car, too). I felt so bad that Kevin didn't get hardly any sleep, that we dragged my mom out of bed and across town in the middle of the night (at least that way Connor got an uninterrupted night's sleep), and that we were going to have to pay for another triage hospital visit (I don't remember for sure, but I think that each time I went to the hospital and got sent home when I was pregnant with Connor, we got billed for about $100 of the triage stay).

But, as the doctor said when we were leaving, it is important that Lex is still doing well in there, and that we will still be able to have him at the right time when he is ready. As disappointed as I was early this morning, now that I've gotten some rest, I'm really glad that I didn't end up with an emergency c-section last night, or something like that.