Contractions, Contractions

I just called a friend from church to cancel our plans for meeting today. The girls and I were going to spend a few hours at her house, which is at least an hour away. Last night, I was awakened many times by contractions, which, in my experience with my previous labors, usually means that the contractions are "real," but the same thing happened Saturday night, and they petered out to nothing special by mid-church on Sunday. I am virtually certain I will not be having a baby today, but the possibility (however remote) that I will be so far away from home (or anywhere--she lives way out in the country) when I realize "this is it" is way too much of a chance to take. I just picture myself giving birth alone in the car (with the girls in their car seats) on the side of the road and with no cell phone service, and it's enough to make the difficult decision to cancel.



Since 6:15 this morning, I've been trying to figure out what's going on, because if I'm not going to give birth today, it would be really good to keep my mind off the contractions by going somewhere or at least having an activity planned. I haven't officially timed contractions (the girls played with our "contraction-timing" watch the other day, and I have yet to find it again), but they've been about 3-5 minutes apart (by the clock) and fairly strong. I packed Casey's lunch, ate breakfast with the girls, took them on a walk around the neighborhood, watered the lawn & plants, and showered. I didn't notice a change in the contractions, but they were not debilitating. I don't know what I hoped to find out, because there isn't much difference between my Braxton Hicks contractions and real labor contractions. Needless to say, I ended up calling Case to see what he thought I should do. He feels the same way: almost sure I won't have the baby in the next day or two, but not worth the chance of giving birth on the side of the road or the kitchen floor of our friend's house.



So, here I sit at home. The girls and I are going to take an early nap in a few minutes and then see how things go after lunch. Maybe we'll try to stop by a friend's house here in town if I'm getting distracted by the contractions this afternoon. I'm not paranoid about going out--just trying to be careful about how far I go.