It could be a long month...

My Uncle Doug called me today, for no particular reason, just cause he was thinking about me.  He mentioned that he thought today might be The Big Day.

I didn't tell him that I had passed some mucus earlier in the day, because uncles don't want to hear about mucus (now that I think about it, you probably don't either... I promise that's the last time I'll mention it).  I also didn't mention that I'd been having some interesting tightenings - not necessarily real contractions because they weren't painful, but they were making it hard to breathe.  And I'd been super emotional all day.  And my back hurt like crazy last night, and I made BJ rub it forever...

Hmmm...

Around 2:30 pm I started paying a bit more attention to these tightenings.  I noticed that they were coming at even intervals - about every 12 minutes.  I chatted to BJ, "ummmm... I think maybe you should come home..."  He took a wait and see approach.  When I was able to predict when it would happen within 2 minutes based on the timing of the last two, I said, "do you think you should come home?"  "I'm already gathering my stuff," he said.

I called the midwife's office and described everything that had been happening.  "Can you get here by 3:30?" they said.  "Yes, I can make that happen..."

I called my friend Karen, but she didn't answer her phone, so I called our friends down the street and they agreed to take the kids for us.  I started gathering my hospital bag, my make up bag, my "oh shit, we're having this baby on the highway" bag (which contains a blanket, a shower curtain, two towels, and two receiving blankets), the cord blood collection kit (we're donating our cord blood for Huntington's Disease research), and my purse.  I even remembered the camera and the charger - there's a first time for everything!  I grabbed my cell phone charger just as our neighbor arrived to get the girls and BJ got home a few minutes after that.

We called BJ's mom and my mom and sister from the road and told them to be on high alert.  We made it to the midwife's office in excellent time, without a police escort and/or paramedics.

The midwife checked me.

No change since Tuesday.

Still at 3 cm and 80%.

I'm trying not to feel silly, because I did have several good reasons to think things might be happening, and because it's better to get checked and be sent home than to have the baby unassisted at home (actually, our friend down the street - the one who took the kids - is a postpartum nurse, so she's totally qualified to help me birth this baby if it comes down to it).  It was an excellent dress rehearsal.  I stayed remarkably calm in the face of what I thought might be imminent labor and a couple of things-that-didn't-go-according-to-plan.  BJ stayed calm too, but he's always calm.

It was a good trial run.  There's no reason to feel silly.

But it's going to be a long month.