Contractions

Baby is on its way. It may not be until tomorrow, but I think it's pretty inevitable at this point. (As if it wasn't inevitable at any point...)

For posterity's sake, I'll journal how it started. I've been having increasing aches and soreness, and especially lower back pain, for 2 days. But the back pain was pretty low grade, and it would last for a while. And my uterus never got hard. Never! The doctor who briefed me on How to Know When You're Really in Labor said that contractions are when your uterus is as hard as your forehead, and nothing else. Contractions are NOT pain, and even if I'm in debilitating pain for 60 seconds every 4 minutes, if it's not hard as a rock, they're not contractions and I better not call and bother him. More or less. So it was really bothersome that I was having no hardening. My uterus used to harden often when I'd have Braxton-Hicks contractions, but it hasn't done that for the last month or so.

Also, as for the other pain I've been having... well, there's no nice way to describe it, so I'll go for accurate. I know it is hard to imagine exactly what your cervix feels like (especially if you don't have one), but once you feel it, you just know it. And my cervix feels like it's been dilating more, which is great. Sure, it's a little uncomfortable, but I like feeling like we're making progress. But every now and again for the last week, I've had these sudden, shooting, very uncomfortable pains that feel exactly as if baby is shoving a fist right through. And it hurts. But those certainly didn't have accompanying hardening, and I know they weren't contractions. I think it literally was just growing and stretching pains in my cervix. But they were happening so frequently and I was so upset that I wasn't having anything even remotely like a contraction ever, Mike started trying to convince me that they really were contractions. But I knew they weren't.

And now, I am having contractions. They're weak, and my uterus hardens only with some of them. But I fell asleep a little before 11PM, and I was up at midnight to pee, and I was pretty uncomfortable, but I thought I was just having residual back pain. And then I slept very lightly, and had bad dreams in which I was in a lot of pain, and then I woke around 2AM to find that I wasn't dreaming, and I was having sudden, sharp bouts of lower back pain that was radiating into my abdomen, and viola!, they are contractions! So I tried to guesstimate how far apart they are, and it was happening every 10 or 15 minutes, but as 3AM approached, it was happening every 8 minutes. And then I decided to give up on sleeping, and to let Mike sleep so that at least one of us is rested tomorrow. And I figured I'd journal what's happening to me so that the next time I am just beginning labor, I can recall how it happened the first time.

(Naive, don't you think?? I haven't even endured one bit of the misery I'm going to endure over the next 24-48 hours, but I'm planning on the second delivery about 2 years from now.)

Anyhow, I also wanted to remember to journal before the baby's born just how thankful I am for this baby. And this pregnancy. And Mike. Ignorance is bliss, and I am blissfully ignorant of the misery of having to suffer to create a child, or worse, not being able to at all. I read a lot of blogs that just happen to be written by infertile women (many of whom have persevered and now have children), and at times I feel inordinately guilty for making a baby on our first try. But I try to remember that it is normal for my body to work, and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. I don't feel that I was handed this baby because I'm just a lucky sonofabitch, and I hate it when that thought creeps into my mind. Because it makes me feel like I don't deserve it. Like if I didn't have to work hard for it (like some of these infertile women, whose stories just crush the spirit), then I'll never appreciate it enough.

But I will, and do, appreciate what I have, and I'm totally bowled over with love every time I even picture our infant child, swaddled carefully, resting in my husband's arms. I'm just very, very, very thankful.