The Waiting Game

I think now is the hardest part of pregnancy for me. I'm actually feeling less physically miserable at this point than I did the first time around, although I am fairly uncomfortable now and continuing to sleep poorly most nights. But the hard part is just...waiting.

I'm 37 1/2 weeks, which means I'm full-term and technically, could go into active labor at any time. So every little twinge, every back pain, every time I start having semi-regular contractions makes me think "Is this it?" And then it's not. I know I'll recognize full-blown labor once it actually starts, but it's the not knowing and waiting to find out if what seems like labor really is labor that's driving me a little batty.

Sunday night, I had back pain for about 3 hours that just started getting worse. It was accompanied by contractions that didn't subside when I laid down, which usually stops false labor contractions. I started to think it was go-time. I even had to get out of bed at 2am to sit against a heating pad because the back pain was so bad, and had about 6 sizeable contractions in half an hour. I went back to bed after an hour since the heating pad had helped my back pain quite a bit. I figured that, if it was true labor, I'd wake up when the pain got bad enough.

Woke up around 6am and told James that it might be a good idea for him to work from home on Monday, just in case this was the real thing and things were ramping up soon. So he stayed home and worked from here, and I went back to sleep for a while. Got up, took Rachel to preschool and went to a doctor's appointment where they monitored the contractions, and I was indeed having them pretty regularly. They were fairly strong as well. But unfortunately, things tapered off later in the morning, and I was just having sporadic contractions throughout the day.

Now I feel like it's probably not going to happen all that soon. I know things can change on a dime and it could still be any time. And I realize that 2 1/2 weeks is not very long to wait. I doubt they'll have me go past my due date because of the gest. diabetes. Still, it's a little discouraging and frustrating to just have to wait and not now when things will happen, especially now that we have a daughter to worry about when it's time for us to go to the hospital. We've had several people offer to watch her if needed, but most are tied up on weekdays, at least until the early afternoon, so we'll have to see how things play out. I'm sure we'll have a place for her when we need it; worst case scenario, she'll go to the hospital with us and James will hang out with her until someone can pick her up. So it would be nice if labor would happen at a time when someone's available to be with Rachel, but we'll just have to WAIT and see what happens.

I hate waiting.