Wow, so that was a ride.

Tuesday after I wrote my post, I had one goal: get this party started, yo.  Lorso and I had been paying attention to my contractions (correction: “contractions”) and timing them, hoping to see them get harder and closer together so that we could leave for the hospital.  (Do you see now why having a baby messes you up? Simultaneous desire for and dread of pain?  Wacked. Out.)

We walked around the block, we packed the final things in our bags, we went over instructions for Bug with my mom, I ate spicy food, etc. etc. Then finally at 12:30 that night we decided to go ahead and go to the hospital and just be there.  Better safe than sorry, we thought. (Bug was born about an hour and a half after we arrived, horns blaring through red lights, at the hospital.)  Lorso’s primary mission throughout this whole pregnancy, I believe, was to avoid shaving 5 MORE years off his life with another harrowing Mario Andretti-like entrance to the ER with a wailing woman reclined in the passenger seat.

So we went, excited, to the hospital.

They hooked me up to the monitor and asked me about my contractions, at which point I told them I was about a 2 on the pain scale. (This should have tipped me off for what was to come. Contractions at a 2 = PANSY CONTRACTIONS. And I knew this.) So the midwife suggested I walk around to try to get things going.

So we walked.  And we walked. And we walked. And walked.

And my contractions stopped.

The midwife came in to check me out and I had made no progress, and then she said the dreaded words: “I don’t think you’re in labor. You may want to go back home.”

I imagine that hell is probably a lot like driving from the hospital back to your house at 4:45 am five days past your due date with mildly uncomfortable contractions, no sleep and STILL NO BABY.

At home I went straight to bed, mentally and physically exhausted, knowing I would have to wake up at least one more day still pregnant and miserable.

Physical pain: 2
Mental pain: eleventy four.

The story continues here…