Remember how I would give myself two false alarms?  Well, today was kinda just half of one.

Today was INCREDIBLY insane at work.  Seriously.  I wasn’t prepared for it to be so nuts.  As a result, I ended up running exactly nineteen thousand flights of stairs and running around for about three hours straight.  When I finally took a break and went to pee.. I noticed a LOT of fluid.  I mean, your last trimester in general is a little.. more.. moist than the rest of pregnancy, but this was above and beyond.  It was the first time I’ve called my doctor this trimester, I think.

The nurse I spoke to on the phone agreed that it very well could be my water breaking, even though it wasn’t the “sudden gush” you read about.  So she advised me to change into some dry panties and see if things continued down the same path.

“I’m at work,” I said.  ”I don’t keep an extra pair of dry panties at work.”

“You’re at WORK?” she asked.  ”Didn’t you say your due date was tomorrow?”

Anyway, so I ran home and changed into some dry clothes.  After sitting for an hour, Bryan and I bit the bullet and headed to Labor and Delivery.  We were ushered into a room, where I figured they would just take a swab of me, but before long I was strapped into thirty-seven machines.  I was asked if I was contracting, and I said, “Yeah, about every nine or ten minutes.  Nothing serious.”

One of the thirty-seven machines told a different story: I was contracting every 2-5 minutes.  Well, damn.  Aren’t I a superwoman?

My dilation, though, was unchanged from Tuesday.  Still at 2 cm.  A small 2 cm, at that.

We were told we would hang out for observation.  If I made any further dilation (specifically to 4 cm), we would begin a pitocin drip and I would be officially admitted.  Five hours later, the contractions had moved to 2-3 minutes apart, but the dilation had only moved to 3 cm.  Having not eaten since noon (and even then, just having a bowl of broth), I was more than happy to discharge myself with the promise that I would return as soon as “something changed”.

It was nice to know that things are moving, though, and honestly, it was nice to get a peek into what will happen when the real game begins.  I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight (versus that horrible hospital bed), but as you can see, it’s almost four and I’m not really sleeping.  But that’s the update from over here.  I think we’ll have a baby soon.  

You know, by like Thursday.