Pregnant or not, sometimes figuring out what your body wants or needs is tricky. Answers are not always easy to come by, and leaves us wondering or, in my case, overthinking.
Last night, I thought I might be in early labour.
I spent from about 10:30pm-4:30am in pain, with lots of cramping and tightening. I dozed in and out as contractions seemed to come and go, but any and every time I woke up, I was in quite a bit of pain. On top of contractions, I swear my pelvis was the loosest its ever been. Every time I even shifted, it crunched in and out of place. SO painful! I didn’t want to overreact, wake the house, and head to the hospital, so I tried to figure it out on my own.
None of the pain even started until I lay down, which put a point in the “real contractions” column for me. Usually braxton hicks contractions calm themselves down with rest.
Nothing I did even slowed them. I get a lot more braxton hicks contractions when I have to pee, so every single time I lulled last night, I got up to pee. Didn’t make a difference. They just kept coming. Again, point for real contractions.
The pain wasn’t super bad. Like I said, I did doze and sleep bits here and there. I could walk through them and could’ve talked through them. Yet, my labours are odd, and its not unheard of for me to feel just vaguely uncomfortable right up to transition where the bomb drops. Sounded like labour to me.
My one hangup was that only the bottom half of my uterus seemed to be hardening. Maybe this isn’t all that strange, but it was new to me. In full blown labour, I remember less of how much it hurt (because of my weird labours) and more about how high up my stomach would turn to stone, and how it cut my breath short. That was not the case this time around. So, point for braxton hicks?
I woke up around 4:30 to what might have been my last cramp/contraction of the night. They haven’t returned. Painless braxton hicks are still in full force, but nothing like last night. I’m relieved, but also pretty interested in what happened last night. I have a prenatal tomorrow but I happen to know my family doctor is away tomorrow, so my student doctor will be overseen by another doctor. I’d SO much prefer to talk to Dr. Guselle about this, so I called her office first thing this morning, and it turns out she’s been out all week, today included. So, I wait for tomorrow.
In the meantime, here are my thoughts.
- Maybe I got a little lick of labour! Ok, fair enough. Thanks for staying in there, little girl!
- Maybe my body was super overtired from the day and the day before. Both were busy, productive days! Yesterday alone, we got car seats moved around in the van, including the infant seat!!! I got her cradle wiped down and ready for her. I got some dresser drawers reorganized in our room and hauled some garbage away. I planned a TON for the lake. Sorry, I’ll go into more detail on another day, but I did a lot yesterday. Maybe my body was legitimately just over it, and wanted to give me a (literal and figurative) wakeup call.
- Maybe she dropped?? Yesterday was far more uncomfortable of a day than usual, very very low down. She seemed really shifty and unsettled, as if trying to get into place, maybe. So maaaybe my body was just making room and adjusting to her possibly having dropped lower.
- Maybe this will be my life for the next 3.5 weeks…. I SUPER hope not!
It was a pretty off-putting night, I wont lie. It made me very nervous. I knew, if I called Health Line, they’d instruct me to go straight to the hospital. However, having a working husband and four young kids complicates that pretty significantly. Also the fact that I’ve never once went into labour on my own, and never early, leads me to think I won’t drop this baby anytime soon. Anything can happen, I know this, but I’m glad I stayed home and just toughed it out.
I’ll be spending the majority of today on my butt, accomplishing little to nothing productive, trying to rest my body. A hot soak tonight will hopefully do the trick and relax my big ole uterus for the night so I can be fresh in the morning! I can’t miss Dekker’s track and field day!!!