At 1:00 this morning, I woke up with a back ache and contractions. Aha! This would be it! No more non-stress tests, ultrasounds, weekly visits, discomfort at night from poking elbows and knees… I’d just have to make it through the labor and delivery process and this pregnancy thing would be pretty well wrapped up. Still, I waited to be sure this was the real thing – having already experienced false labor once (a fun thing to experience at work), I didn’t want to wake my doctor or my mother-in-law up for something that turned out not to be real. By 2:30, I was pretty well convinced. So, I woke my doctor – she turns out to be pretty chipper when paged at 2:30 in the morning – and we agreed that we’d wait until my contractions were 5 minutes apart before I called her again and went to the hospital. Of course, she advised me to get some sleep if I could, and of course, the combination of contractions and just general excitement meant that I really couldn’t. Add in a toddler who decided to wake up at around the same time, plus then our cats made just enough intermittent noise to make it seem like there was an intruder in the house, and I didn’t get back to bed until 4:30. I was still having contractions, but figured that I’d try to snag whatever rest I could, since today was apt to be a long day.

7:00 – wake up to a calling toddler. Discover that contractions have stopped. Toddler’s not going back to sleep, so there’s really no way for me to get back to sleep unless I take her to mother-in-law’s and then retreat back to bed. But by the time I go to the effort of getting her over there, might as well just go to work.

I’m now at work, luckily in an up-time for me for energy. This afternoon’s going to really suck, though. I’m waiting on my doc to call me back so that I can schedule those non-stress tests, and I’m very inclined to say – “Uh, induce me, please… Pretty please???” Theoretically, this could all continue for 5 more weeks, between the 2.5 or so weeks before my due date, and the two weeks after that are usually considered “the zone” for having a baby. 5 more weeks…??! Forget about the baby blues after delivery – I’ll be a walking zombie before this baby gets here!