She tricked me - that sneaky, sneaky baby!

I was completely convinced that I had gone into labor during the wee hours of the night... no such luck!

I was kept awake through most of the night with mild cramping and contractions that were completely unlike all of my practice contractions. I tried for about an hour to time them - that is the first thing they will ask when we call the hospital, "how far apart are your contractions." They seemed to be about 12-15 minutes apart - we're supposed to call when they are 5 minutes apart. So I decided not to wake up Daniel and I tried to sleep. I probably managed 2 or 3 hours of very interrupted sleep. Around 5am I decided to wake up Daniel and let him know the exciting news.

We took showers, had a light breakfast and headed out for a daybreak walk to Alamo Square. Walking is recommended during the early stage of labor because it tends to make the contractions stronger and more regular. During our hour-long excursion, I had about three contractions - two of them were 10 minutes apart, the last one was about 25 minutes later. And, all but one of them fell short of the intensity I felt overnight... not a sign of progress.

We then headed off to our morning doctor appointments. The first appointment was an ultrasound to check amniotic fluid levels and fetal monitoring to check Mather's heartbeat and activity levels. Everything looked good, we could even see her stretching out her toes on the ultrasound. We had about an hour before our next appointment, so we took another long walk which I don't think resulted in any contractions.

The next appointment was with the nurse-midwife at my doctor's office. All of that overnight cramping and contracting was productive - I am now 2cm dilated! The midwife suspects that I'll go into labor within the week. He suggested I go home and get some rest as there could be another sleepless night on the horizon.

So, I'm off to bed at 1:30 in the afternoon - goodnight.