27w2d: Trip to L&D

Well, the braxton hicks contractions finally sent us to labor & delivery on Sunday. We arrived home after breakfast and a little shopping and I noticed my contractions were more frequent than usual. I started timing and discovered they were only 3-7 minutes apart. I drank a bunch of water and rested on the couch - no change. Took a hot shower and sat back down - still no change. After an hour and a half we decided we better head in.

The triage nurse hooked me up to a monitor and sure enough, I was contracting frequently. The on-call doctor measured my cervix and it was still long and closed. After sitting on the monitors for over an hour, the nurse gave me nifedipine to try to relax my uterus. It did not work. Next came an IV with fluids; I was plenty hydrated on my own so this seemed unnecessary, but whatever. That didn't work either. So we sat... After another couple hours, they checked my cervix again and determined that it hadn't changed. Thankfully these contractions were not productive. I tested negative on a Fetal Fibronectin Test which was a good indicator that pre-term labor was not imminent. So, at 10:30pm they decided to send me home with an Ambien (sleeping pill). The nurse said they give it to their high risk patients as it not only leads to a solid 6-8 hours of sleep, but can also help calm everything enough to break the contractions. She made me take the pill before I left. By the time we got home, I was SO loopy. I sent an email to work telling them I would be working from home in the morning (barely remember this), took a shower and brushed my teeth (Chris tells me I did these things), and slept until 4:30am. The contractions did finally slow down and have been back to a couple per hour since then.

Oh, the doctor told me she wasn't surprised my uterus was contracting so frequently as it is measuring nearly full-term for a singleton.