Still Waiting

A lot has happened over the past few days, but at the same time nothing has happened. I started having contractions on Tuesday evening at about 8 pm and they continued throughout the night. I didn't sleep at all that night, but caught a little cat nap from 5:30 am to 7:30 am. When I woke up the contractions had pretty much stopped all together and I was pretty frustrated. All of that and still nothing. We decided to go into see the doctor on Wednesday to see if I had made any progress. The doctor had told me once that if I was contracting and it was during office hours to just come in and she will check me. So we decided to do that....and were there for 3 hours. We waiting for close to an hour (which isn't out of the ordinary even if you have an appt.) then the nurse came out to tell us that the doctor had to go deliver a baby but should be back in 20 minutes. Yeah right. We waiting probably close to another hour before getting called back. She checked my cervix and determined that I was 2 cm dilated. That's it?! All of those contractions the night before and only 2 cm? The doctor thought I would go into labor within 24 hours, so that's good. She then wanted to do a non-stress test on me and the baby to monitor the contractions and the baby's movement and heart rate. Taylor was apparently taking a nap through all of this drama because she wasn't moving around much. So they give me some juice to pep her up just a bit. It worked and the doctor was happy with the results. I asked if I needed to come back for my scheduled appt which was the next day (today) at 10 am. The nurse said to go ahead and come in assuming I wasn't in labor of course so we could do the sonogram that we had scheduled and the doctor could check me again. Once we left the doctor my contractions pretty much stopped all together and I could rest. I had been contracting for close to 24 hours with nothing much to show from it. We ate something, took a short walk, and went to bed at 7 pm. I didn't get up until 8:30 this morning! I feel so much better than I did yesterday because i was able to sleep.

We went in for our 10 am appt. where my contractions started picking up again while in the waiting room. Nothing too bad though. After only waiting 30 minutes the sonogram guy calls us back. He does the sonogram where everything looks great, heart rate, amniotic fluid, size, etc. He then puts me on the non stress test again. This time Taylor was awake and moving around a lot more. I had 2 pretty good contractions, the bigger of the 2 I barely even felt. Which is weird because I was feeling them more yesterday when they weren't as big. The nurse and the doctor both commented on how I was having some pretty good contractions. The doctor then checked my cervix again and determined I was 3 cm! I am so confused because between the time that she checked me yesterday and today I hardly had any contractions. The doctor said that she was kind of shocked that I wasn't in active labor for how far along that I am with a first baby. She said 3 cm is usually 12-18 hours of labor for a first time mom! And she said that it's good because that is less time that I have to progress in the hospital in a lot of pain. And I am thinking, less time to be in labor before I can get that epidural! She said that every page she got last night she thought was me. Good to know that she is thinking about me :) We talked again about induction and I told her I was fine with going over to the hospital right now. We talked about it and since I have made a pretty good bit of progress now that its going to happen at any time. AND we found out that my doctor is the one on call this weekend, that puts me way more at ease to go ahead and just wait. So that's where we stand now. Hopefully the next post will be about Taylor's arrival.