The Last Two Days in More Detail

I took my last terbutaline pill at midnight Sunday morning. We got up and went to church on Sunday as a family for the first time in over four months :) Once home from church, I napped for a couple hours, then woke up and sent Rob to take a nap. I started having contractions around 3pm. They started off at 3 mins apart, but were only lasting about 30 secs. They were pretty painful and reminded me of the contractions I had when I had Megan (she was induced, so they were caused by pitocin). I started recording them around 8pm. They were still coming every 3 mins and were getting longer. My parents brought over dinner and prepared to stay the night. I wanted to make sure things were actually happening before going in and for some reason, these just didn't feel right. I had Rob go to sleep and tried to rest, but they really hurt and sleep was impossible. I finally woke Rob up around 3am and told him that since it had been 12 hours and they weren't showing any signs of letting up, we needed to go in and get checked. I called the dr on call and he verified that we should go in and get checked. I didn't bother texting Brittney (who is going to be there for the birth) as we thought we'd wait until we knew what was going on.

We got to the hospital around 3:30am. They checked and discovered that I was dilated about 1 cm. The contractions were still coming every three mins when we got there, but shortly after, they started to be more intense, but less sharp and settled down to every four mins. Basically, the first 12 hours of my contractions were not labor - it was my body's reaction to going off the medications. 12 hours of intense medication-induced contractions jump started real labor.

There are four doctors in my OB's office. During this pregnancy I have seen two of them. The third was on call this morning. He is the oldest one of the group and after the nurse checked me, he decided he wanted to use terbutaline and hydration (like last weekend) to try and stop the contractions again as I am two days shy of 36 wks. Rob and I talked about it and decided not to have them give me the shots. I had just discussed it with my dr on Friday and he had taken me off the pills, so it didn't make sense for me to then start shots. We decided just to wait for my dr to get there.

Brittney came in around 7am and even brought breakfast for Rob :)

They continued to monitor me and the contractions stayed steady at 4 mins apart. About 30 mins before my dr got in, I started falling asleep. When that happened, the contractions started spacing out more. At that point I was so exhausted (I had been having contractions every 3 mins for 17 hours at this point) that I think my muscles just stopped working. The dr came in and checked me and I was at 3 cms. Because the contractions had slowed down though, he said he wanted to just monitor me for a while. Two hours later I was dropping from exhaustion and still at 3 cms. I was still having regular contractions, but they weren't doing anything because I was so tired out. My dr sent me home with vicodin to knock me out and help me rest through the contractions, with instructions to come back when they get closer together again.

Rob and I went home and crashed. I have continued to have contractions that feel like labor, not braxton-hicks, although they are still farther apart, so we are hanging out at home. I'm assuming at some point they will start getting closer together and then we'll go in again.

Up to this point, we had never been up all night with any of our births. My longest labors were with Beth and Jack and were about 8 hours. I don't know if this is karma catching up with us or if it is just another tribute to Eva's desire to be our youngest child :)