So now I have a complication: contractions. They are apparently Braxton-Hicks contractions, but they made for a very nerve-wracking night last night.

The night before last I remember getting up an awful lot to pee. I muttered something in the morning about Kate moving around in weird positions and pressing on my bladder. I know I had a few contractions during the day, but thought nothing much of it. It was 9pm when we laid down in bed that I started really noticing them. I thought to myself, jeez, either she’s really pressing her butt and back out or I’m having some frequent Braxton-Hicks. I tried checking my belly to see if there were hard spots. The sides seemed kind of soft. After Den fell asleep and I reclined with my laptop I started checking the clock. Every fifteen minutes or so. Well shit. Somehow I’m thinking Kate wouldn’t be doing something that predictable. I started feeling a little panicky… I am not ready to have this baby, as excited as I am to meet her she still needs to wait at least another 3 weeks until she’s full term. Please. I just want a full term baby.

My Midwives say to call if you get more than four an hour, but I know their standard advice: drink a bunch of water, lay down, call back in an hour if they haven’t gone away. So I drank a bunch of water and laid back down. That didn’t stop them, except now I had to pee really bad every time one hit. Fun times.

I was going to call the Midwife… but I fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later thinking, yeah! Okay, they went away! …. And then another one hit. Crap. Pulled out my cell phone and started timing them… every 10 minutes. #%@#@%$ So I got up and called the Midwife on call. Turned out it was my regular Midwife who was on! So I told her I was having contractions every 10 minutes. At first she thought I was full term, but when I corrected her that I was 33 weeks, she said, Ooohhhh. So here were the facts: If they weren’t increasing in length or intensity or frequency then they were probably Braxton-Hicks, not actual labor. I have had no problems with pre-term labor in either pregnancy. I’m days away from 34 weeks, and at 34 weeks they wouldn’t even do much, if anything, to try to stop labor if it did occur. If I went in to L&D they’d give me a NST to check for fetal heartrate reactivity to make sure she’s doing okay, they’d check my cervix to see if I was dilating at all, and maybe they’d do a fFN test. So she said it was up to me, I could go in if I wanted reassurance, or I could just try to sleep and see if it got worse or not.

Now at that point I wasn’t worried about Kate at all, she was plenty active all night – in fact I think the contractions were keeping her awake and pissing her off, she’d kick like mad when one ended, as if to tell me to cut it out. My worry was that I would dilate without me knowing it. I kept thinking about my labor with Devin, and how I honestly thought that the contractions weren’t real contractions until they told me I was 4cm – up to that point it was just so easy. But I kept thinking, so if I go in and tell me I’m dilated but won’t do anything about it, what does that really gain me? I’d just as well stay home and to see what the contractions did. So that’s what I told her, and that’s what I did. I crawled into bed and pretty quickly fell asleep.

When I woke up this morning I still got a few contractions, but not nearly like they were overnight, not 10 minutes apart. So that confirmed that it wasn’t real labor, just really annoying BH. (How irritating that the entire diagnosis of BH contractions is a retrospective one – you can only know for sure after the fact.)

Kate was very active again, reassuring me that all was well with her – a huge relief. I’ve realized that one of my fears revolves around going into labor. The last time I was pregnant I started getting the feeling that I was going to go into labor soon – I could feel something was different. That was the day I found out he’d passed away; my body was indeed getting ready to go into labor, because he had died. So yes, I get nervous when something changes, nervous that it means something bad. I am very happy Kate has continued to be active for me, letting me know that all is well with her.

I went on about my day, and happily the BH are either too light to notice while I’m up and active or mostly go away during the day. They seem to get worse when I lay down… though I admit that could be simply because I am more tuned in to what’s going on when I’m laying down and still. But other than that they don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason. I have no idea why they suddenly started happening so frequently, it just seems so random: yesterday was not an overactive day for me, I took a nap, ate dinner, watched TV and went to bed. Nothing unusual, and in fact I was far less active than I was a week ago.

I’m still getting them on and off this evening. They have not increased in intensity or length, and the frequency of them seems kind of random. I really hope this is not how it’s going to be for the next six weeks, as it does make sleeping difficult – not because the contractions themselves are painful (they’re not, they just kind of tingle a little bit), but because it squeezes my bladder and I have to keep running to the bathroom!

I’m telling my body just to give me another three weeks. After that, fine, I’ll just be waiting for labor to start – not that this false labor teasing would be very polite then, either, but at least I wouldn’t be worried about a baby in the NICU.

I am so not a fan of this. I want to go back to when I only had a couple a day.