Counting Contractions

For the past three hours we've been counting contractions. It started with a phone call from my mother, who was of course complaining that so far the Missus had been off her anti-contractions medication for almost 24 hours and nary a contraction to be seen. Not a minute had gone after hanging up the phone when the first one came. It was a small one; the next one didn't come for almost a half hour. So we decided they were just small Braxton-Hicks contractions and popped in a movie to watch. Ever since checking out the trailer for THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM I had been wanting to see the second film in the series, which I had only seen once.

About half way through they started coming more frequently. Sometimes 10-14 minutes apart, sometimes closer. At around 10:30 PM they began to come pretty consistently, about every 4-6 minutes. At 11:15 PM we finally called the OB/GYN on call.

Now, a bit of backstory. The original due date, before all the pre-term labor stuff, was June 14th. Which is now 19 days away (18 since it's now past midnight). We saw the doctor for a regular checkup on Monday, and Thursday we went again after a long night that began with my wife waking me up around 2:30 AM saying, "I think something just happened." Turns out the "thing" that happened looked to be the mucus plug. When we went on Thursday the first thing the doctor said was, "Wow! I think you;re ready to go into labor!" We confirmed that we had enough medicine to get us through Friday, which BOTH her main doctors confirmed was the end of her 37 weeks. We were told to call if the contractions were 8 minutes apart, or if her water broke. Properly educated, we left.

Cut back to about an hour ago, when we called the emergency number to speak to the doctor on call. It wasn't one of her regular doctors, but a younger woman on call for the evening. her response was to wait until they contractions were consistently 5 minutes apart, and not to worry too much, since we were only in our 36 week. Upon explaining that, unless we were in some alternate reality where time was measured differently, we had 19 days until our due date, and with the corroboration of her main doctors we were all in agreement that the Missus was, indeed, finishing up her 37th week.

Sorry, you can't argue with someone who knows what's what. She said to try a warm shower and get some sleep. "Slightly perturbed" only scratches the surface of our feelings towards this interloper. However, since there was a serious possibility that this dunderhead might actually be the person who would be delivering the boy into the world, we counted to 10 and relaxed, and began counting again.

Now it's 12:22 in the morning. Since the phone call the Missus has been having gradually longer and stronger contractions every 4 to six minutes apart, with the last 4 being exactly 5 minutes apart and lasting about 45 seconds each time. We're going to go for about another half hour and then make the call again.

There is the strong possibility that we may be seeing some baby pics posted soon!