False Alarm #1

Saturday evening I was at sister’s place and felt these sharp lower back pains associated with lower abdomen cramps. I’ve had the lower abdomen cramps before but not the lower back pains. I started to track them. They were coming every 10 minutes. It was a shooting pain from my back to the front of my stomach. I was also freezing, so I had layers of blankets on me. Within an hour the cramps came every 5 minutes then moved to 3. So we decided to go home. I figured I should take a bath, which is recommended, to relax and see if I still get them. I called the hospital and they told me to walk around, drink water and see if that went away.

I took my bath and the cramps still occurred. They were around every 7 minutes. I decided to try to sleep b/c it was around midnight and the timing of the cramps weren’t consistent or for very long. I wasn’t in too much pain. I could still talk and move around without any problems.

I was told to come in when the contractions were 5 minutes apart for over or when they were unbearable – which was neither for me.

Anyway, I was up the rest of the night b/c these cramps/false contractions were still hitting me. After about 6 hours I did manage to fall asleep for about 30 minutes. Finally at 5 I was up again, walking around or changing positions. I called the hospital again to talk to them about my night. They pretty much told me that I had false contractions and that I needed to try to sleep. The resident doctor told me to take Tylenol PM to help me sleep for a few hours and to eat something (I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch). By around 6 I was so exhausted and sleepy. I took regular Tylenol and fell asleep for a few hours. Got up every hour but did finally manage to sleep until around 2. The contractions seemed to have stopped.

It was really hard to detect whether the contractions were real or not. I now know they were false b/c the contractions were never regular and the pain never escalated. It was the same pain for 6 hours, no escalation. It was quite annoying though when you’re trying to figure it out.

Needless to say, we are both now ready for baby pumpkin to arrive! I have a dr. appointment tomorrow so it will be interesting what the dr. will say about my crazy evening.