Sunday, November 28, 2010

practice run to the hospital

Sooo. . . Tyler and I got to go test out the Labor & Delivery floor at Centennial Med Center Monday night! I ran a bunch of errands Monday and did a lot around the house. . . apparently a little too much because I started having pretty frequent contractions that evening.

I was just relaxing in the recliner watching Oprah and noticed my Braxton Hicks contractions which normally only happen a couple times per hour had started coming every 10-15 minutes or so. This went on til probably 8:00 amidst watching tv, then eating dinner at Chuy's (YUM) and driving back home. From 8-10:00 they started getting even closer together, probably every 7 minutes or so. My doctor said to call if I had more than 4 b.h. contractions in an hour so I figured at 9-10 an hour she might want to hear about it! I called the after hours line and spoke with another obstetrician at the practice. She said she was pretty sure I wasn't in labor (here's where I expect her to say just go to sleep and it'll be fine) but to go ahead and come in to the hospital to get checked. What?

Poor Tyler had gone back to work after dinner that night so I felt bad dragging him to the hospital with me, but neither of us wanted to risk having the baby early so I'm glad we went and got checked out! They hooked me up to the baby monitors for heartbeat and contractions and checked my cervix. I wasn't dilated at all so that was good news, but she said I have an irritated uterus. They weren't sure what was causing it but watched me on the monitors for probably another 45 minutes until the contractions had slowed down and weren't as strong. I had a few that were probably only 3 minutes apart!


My mini-contractions on the bottom chart & baby's heartbeat on the top.

After a while the nurse told us to go home, call back if it started again, and follow up with our doctor. I haven't had them nearly as frequently in the days since then and I've been trying to do a little less and rest a little more during the day. We'll see what happens Tuesday, but I think everything is back to normal as long as I take it easy and don't let that darned uterus get irritated again. . .

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