the early hospital visits

I mentioned these stories in my 35 & 36 bump updates, but I after the response I got from my social media post sharing a summary, I thought it was worth highlighting these situations in their own blog post.

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At 35 weeks pregnant, I went to the hospital on Monday (4.26.21). I was having regular, close together cramping / Braxton Hicks from 5pm-8pm and it got to the point where I started getting concerned I might be in labor. Aaron and I were watching a show and I just couldn’t shake the discomfort I was regularly feeling.

Because of my history (not knowing I’m in labor until the last minute), the on-call nurse told me to come in so they could hook me up to the monitor.

Aaron and I left the house at 8:30pm. The nurses checked me & told me I wasn’t dilated at all (which was good!) and the monitor showed a very healthy heartbeat and no contractions. I was basically told that I was dehydrated and that’s why I was cramping so badly. After monitoring me for a little over an hour and drinking lots of water, we were discharged. We got home just shy of midnight and I was still cramping a lot, but at least I knew it wasn’t labor 🙂 I put a hot pack on my belly and was finally able to fall asleep.

I had been cramping/contracting all day Saturday (5.1.21) and he felt so low. I started timing my contractions after dinner and they were 10/20 minutes a part. I went to bed but was woken up to contractions 5-10 minutes a part (some of them were 5 minutes a part, some were 10, some were 7). Aaron and I timed them for an hour before we decided it was worth calling the on-call nurse to explain what was going on. She without hesitation told me to come in because if I was actually in labor they would likely want to stop it because it was “too early.” I had literally just turned 36 weeks. So on Sunday (5.2.21) at 1:30am when we decided to head that way. We got there by 2:30am and they checked me (I was closed) and monitored me for over an hour. They ended up discharging me saying I wasn’t in labor and my uterus was likely just “working out” because it was so stretched from my previous pregnancies – it was getting ready for labor. Weird, but also made sense. We got home at 5am, exhausted.

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My social media post said –
it’s cool, just over here (at home) recovering from the two times I’ve gone to the hospital within a week because I thought I could be in the beginning stages of labor 🥴 don’t think that just because I’ve had three kids before means I know what’s up, cuz there’s still plenty of unknowns 😜
anybody else go into the hospital a time or two too soon?

The responses made me feel so much better, just knowing that I wasn’t alone in being unsure what to expect as the beginning signs of labor.

+Courtney said, “Yes! I went in a total of three times. Once was early labor. The other two times was high blood pressure issues. I ended up being put on bed rest the last month.“

+Randi shared, “I called my midwife in three times before my 7th was born. It got harder, not easier, to know when those babies were really coming“

+Brandi commented, “I did the same thing with my fourth!   we laughed several times and said “it’s tough being a first time mom” those number 4s throw you for a loop”

+And lastly, Katie said, “It’s more common the more pregnancies you’ve had I was told. Everything your body does becomes more efficient and it’s physically very confusing.”

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So what about you? Do you have a story similar to mine or the mamas’ above?