Practice Run

So last night at midnight, I was woken up by some seriously painful contractions. They began in my lower back and wrapped around to the front of my sizable belly. They lasted about a minute and were spaced about twenty minutes apart. They kept coming even after I took a warm bath (my usual "cure" for Braxton-Hicks contractions), walked around, and ate a Popsicle. By 2:30 a.m I woke Will to tell him that I thought labor had started. He began to ask me a variety of logistical questions involving which car had gas in it and did I think my mother-in-law would need the stroller for Jacob. In my misery I decided these were rhetorical questions and left him to his list making. I was able to sleep between contractions and so we decided that we had a while to wait. By around 4:30 a.m the contractions stopped. This morning we called to the midwives and they said to come on in and that there was a good chance the contractions would start up again once I was up and moving about. However, our visit revealed that I was not in labor and that the entire thing was just a practice run! In movies you always see the man and wife scrambling down to the hospital just to be told it is a false alarm. I always thought that was so silly, I thought how could you not know for sure? With Jacob it was easy because my water broke and so we never had to go through the whole timing of contractions thing. Of everything I have read I just never knew that Braxton-Hicks contractions could hurt so badly, now I know that this could happen several more times over the next few weeks until she is born - GREAT.