Hello Braxton-Hicks!

Yup; they have arrived with a vengeance. I've had a few prior to now, but nothing to really note. Again, I had a LOT of these with Katie's pregnancy, so I figured it was only a matter of time. It's funny - they say that every pregnancy could be completely different, but mine are turning out to be quite similar (not the same, but definitely similar).

So, yesterday as I was driving home from work, I noticed that my abdomen just started squeezing - really really hard. It was like I couldn't breathe. For a moment, I forgot about being pregnant and wondered if I was having a panic attack, but then I realized I had had a pretty darn good day and there was no reason to be panicking about anything. It took a minute, but I remembered what that feeling meant.

At home, I followed the advice of my old doctor (the one I have since fired - mine was out of the office for the weekend so I didn't want to call for something like this), and I put my feet up and started drinking water. And then they really hit - boom boom boom! I had three or four in a row - within about ten-fifteen minutes. They were all pretty quick, but they were really really intense - I couldn't breathe and they definitely had some pain with them. Just when I started to really get worried, they would go away and I would be able to rest for an hour or so. Then another wave of three or four would hit. This went on for about three hours and was not the most comfortable experience, but nothing terrible either.

It was then that I remembered one of the really difficult things about the third trimester: Is it labor? Unfortunately, my new doctor doesn't have a nurse call line or physician phone line, so if it's after hours I only have the choices of waiting it out or going to the ER (which is quite expensive). Thankfully, there is an on-call doctor on weekends, but during the week, I'm on my own from 4:00pm until 8:00am the next day. That's something I really need to ask about at our next appointment.

You would think I would know what I'm looking for, but since labor completely took me by surprise last time (and I didn't have a "normal" labor by any stretch of the imagination), I don't. I didn't even know my water had broken because it was such a small little trickle. When I finally got to the hospital with Katie, not only had my water broken, but I was having contractions every three minutes that I didn't even feel. All of this makes me that much more uncertain this time around.

At some point here, I'll reminisce a bit more about Katie's birth for those of you who weren't around to enjoy that story. That was an adventure and a half (as this one will be, I'm sure).

Off to enjoy a beautiful day and the Sweet Corn Festival. Ta-tah!