Party of Four?

looks like charlotte and my body are just messing with me.

today was spent staying relatively close to home and with an eye on my belly (so to speak) to keep track of what was going on. things sort of fell apart around lunch time. since it was a beautiful day and they say that walking is one of the ways to get/keep things going, we decided to spend the day at the zoo. we walked and walked and walked. it was hard to keep an eye on what was happening in my belly since walking generally causes some cramping. it did seem that towards the end of the walk i was getting some distinct contractions, about every 15-20 minutes or so. those faded for a while, but picked back up again after dinner.

so now i sit here on the couch, watching ryan play video games and patiently waiting my turn and having “something” happen every half hour or so.

i don’t think she’s coming any time soon, however. we could keep this game up for days and even weeks before it’s time for the real deal.

sigh. one good thing has come out of this, though. before i felt there was a key difference between “are you ready?” and “it’s time for you to be ready, are you?” i’ve always felt ready, but being faced with the concrete possibility was a completely different feeling and had a completely different answer.

i’m ready now though. i don’t like this teasing stuff and since it’s gonna happen, i’d rather it really happen.

game on.

in case anyone’s watching the blog/feed for news.

we went to bed around 1am finally, with contractions around 20 minutes apart that were slowly gathering in intensity. i woke up every hour or so due to contractions, moving baby, and the standard “gotta pee” feelings, but i’m fairly confident that the contractions had a more regular schedule than that. they say that lying (laying?) on your side diminishes stuff, so who knows.

this morning they seem to be about 15 minutes apart and are definitely stronger. i’ve had a couple since getting up and there was very little “um…i think this is something” doubt in my mind.

so…odds are that today’s at least the day i’m heading to the hospital, if not charlotte’s actual birthday. it still might be all in my head, or take another day or so before anything hospital worthy kicks in. i probably won’t believe it’s actually happening until my water breaks or i’m doubled over in pain :)

toodles!

boy will this sound silly later if i’m not.

this morning i woke up with a weird vibe. i blame the tasty spanikopita i had for dinner last night (read: feta cheese, spinach, philo dough), and my doctor saying “it could be tonight, it could be 2 weeks from now” when i asked her about labor. nevertheless, i woke up worried that today was special, and played through quite a few “what if x happens” scenarios in my head that i hadn’t before. (what if my water breaks right now? what happens if it breaks in the middle of the day? etc etc).

i spent too much time this morning worrying about the nursery, which was still in so many piles of bags of stuff and with much less order to the chaos than i was comfortable with. by 11am it was much, much better, and i was beat. i took my 2pm nap at 12:30 and still managed to sleep until 4, which seemed a bit extreme, even with my over-worked morning.

we had dinner at friends which was tasty and fun. a bit later, while we were just hanging out watching tv and stuff, things began to feel … odd. at first, it was just charlotte doing her evening twists and things, but at one point it felt like more than just her. there’s a tightening that happens when she pushes off and sticks her butt out at me that i’ve sort of gotten used to. this was more intense. then it happened again. and then again. probably only about 3 times in an hour and a half, but still.

we got home and i was still really tired, despite my special long nap. so i hung out on the couch for a while and watched ryan play beautiful katamari for a while.

about 10:30, i decided this was happening too frequently and with too consistent of markers (shortness of breath followed by a too-big-to-be-charlotte “push”) to not be tracked. turns out it’s been happening every 20 minutes or so for the last 2 hours.

so um…yeah.

i really should be sleeping right now, but my brain is not shutting off any time soon. even if this is nothing, this is still “something” and whatever it is, it’s keeping me the hell awake right now. (although the 12:18 hit was definitely *not* charlotte)

the hospital has wifi, so you may be hearing from me again before it’s all really over, depending on how long it takes.