Is this the day?

I woke up at 1:30 this morning with uncomfortable contractions (which I will call surges). I did feel a small amount of watery discharge, I think, but I don't know what it was. I went back to bed and had two more surges, and got up at 1:40. I noticed some red blood tinged discharge, sorry if this is TMI! I started timing the surges, and they were about five minutes apart, lasting between 1 minute 15 seconds and two minutes. When they come on, my pelvic muscles and lower back ache.

At 3:00 a.m. I woke Tim up to tell him I had been having strong surges for an hour and a half. We talked about what else we should do, and finally agreed to call Lynn, even though it was early in the morning. So I did, and we talked for a bit. She said she would come over if I felt I needed help with these surges, but since I didn't really think I did, I agreed I would call her when they went to four minutes apart and much stronger. Then Tim went and woke up Mary Anne, deciding rightly that she would want to be awake and know this was going on. Tim then made us both a fried egg on toast for breakfast.

During the surges, I sit on my yoga exercise ball, and swivel my hips and breathe deep. It helps relieve all the tension. When Tim touches me to give me goosebumps, it is amazing how the endorphins make all discomfort go away.

So I have been timing the surges with the help of a really neat web site called the Contraction Master. After a few hours at four and a half to five minutes apart, they then spread out to seven and eight minutes apart. So I wondered if this was just a false alarm. But then they returned to being about five minutes apart again. In the past hour, they have been anywhere from four to nine minutes apart. But they are very strong, so they must be doing something. Tim will stay home today, he can work from his PC here.

But please don't call us asking if we have had the baby yet! For all we know, I will be at home for 24 hours before needing to go into the hospital. If you get a call from our home number, it doesn't mean anything. If you get one from our cell phone, that should be a good sign! And we will call! And of course, I will try to update the blog as soon as I can.