Contractions?

Last night, at about 9pm, I started having some lower back pain and cramping. By the time The Bee got home at 10:15, I was pretty sure they were some sort of contraction. Either very uncomfortable Braxton Hicks or the real deal that kicks off early labor. By 11pm we started timing them. The were almost exactly 9 minutes apart. By 12:30am, they were about 6-7 minutes apart. I had about 3 in a row that were 5 minutes apart and then they started to space themselves out a lot more...13, 14, 25 minutes apart. By 3am, I sent The Bee to bed (even though he tried to fight me on that) and I tried to rest on the couch and timed the contractions on my laptop using Contraction Master. I am sure this is TMI, but that is part of what these blogs are all about, right? In addition to the contractions, my body seemed to be, um, trying to clean itself out pretty thoroughly. I ran to the bathroom more times that I can count.

Now it is 8:30am and I am still having the contractions, but they don't seem to follow a rhythm anymore. I gave in and called the 24 hour nurse line and they connected me with the doctor who is on call. She said that it is hard to tell what is going on, but as long as Ponyo is moving 10 times within 60 minutes, once a day, she is doing just fine. Our little dancer pretty much moves every time a contraction ends (I don't think she likes being squished) so she must be doing alright. As for the bathroom breaks, she said it could be from the contractions or it could be a virus so I am to drink a lot of fluids and try to rest (ha! I think I got maybe 45 uninterrupted minutes of sleep last night!).

So, we'll see if anything comes of this. On today's agenda: Going to my Mom's to get The Bee a haircut (she is a hairdresser with an in-home shop and The Bee hasn't gotten his haircut since June! Only my silly man would wait until his baby's due date to schedule something like that). Then we were planning on going to see The Hobbit, but if I am running to the bathroom multiple times an hour, I think we'll need to change plans and stay home after the haircut.

I want to give a virtual hug to two people...as I try to figure out what Ponyo is doing, two of our fellow bloggers are dealing with setbacks and could use some love. Laura at The Adventures of an Infertile Myrtle got a false positive after her second cycle with a new doctor. Jessah at Dreaming of Dimples just found out that her IVF cycle needs to be cancelled due to poor response to the drugs. Please keep these women in your thoughts and prayers!