My cervix is a ho

I'm quite frustrated with my cervix at the moment. I was really hoping that the previous post would be the last one on this blog about what is going on between my legs, but, no, of course not.

I started having contractions last night at 8:00 pm and was able to breathe through them and was getting so excited. The time between them was about six and a half minutes, so at bed time I decided to take a Tylenol and try to sleep. Nothing much happened overnight, but when I woke this morning, contractions picked up again.

E went to work, and I started timing. They went from seven minutes apart down to around three minutes apart in the four or so morning hours! I took a hot shower, took a walk, and ate lunch, trying to see if they'd go away on their own (as they sometimes do if you are having false labor), but instead they were growing more intense and more frequent.

This was it! (How horribly wrong I was...)

E came home, we packed up the car and said goodbye to the kitties. We were off!

At the hospital they checked for dilation and hooked me up to two monitors, one that tracked contractions, one that tracked the baby's heart beat and movement. And then we waited. And waited. I was having contractions, but they seemed to be slowing. After about an hour the nurse came back to see if I was getting more dilated. Nothing, nada, zip, nope. I was still dilated the same as two weeks ago, I'm only 2.5 cm. All the contractions were causing me quite a bit of pain, but they weren't doing what they were set out to do, dilate me. Damn.

The nurse called my doc to see what she wanted: did she want to induce me since I was already overdue, or just send me home, and hope the false labor turns into true labor soon? My doc said she wanted to send me home. Damn! I was so excited, so happy to finally be at the hospital, willing to go through hell and back to meet my baby boy. Now I was packing up my things and putting my clothes back on.

So, after a huge shot of morphine, they sent me home tired and grouchy and still experiencing painful contractions. Since then I've rested, ate dinner, and the contractions have continued to slow. So that's the update: my cervix is a ho.

(Also, small side note, I've been super lucky that nobody has slipped and spilled Baby November's name on my blog comments yet. Some of you know what this little fella is going to be named, but I don't want to post his name until he is here, so keep calling him Baby November here and on Facebook. Or, if you'd like, The Stubborn One. That is all.)

This was what I was hoping to be the last photo in my pregnancy photo series. E snapped this of me before I hoped into bed with my super attractive hospital gown. Taken at 40 weeks, 5 days, and with a cervix like a rock.
Once in bed, and attached to the baby monitoring device, and as soon as they did so, Baby November decided to take a nap. They gave me a popsicle hoping the sugar would wake him up a bit. I worked. And the read-out from the second NST is that he's happy in there, and not at all willing to leave.