Sweet Pea's first trip to Labor and Delivery

Let's hope it's the last one before the big visit in July!! Well, here is the story:

Yesterday I got up a 9:30 and ate breakfast. Around 10:30 I noticed that I hadn't felt Sweet Pea move yet, which is very uncharacteristic of our morning. No matter what time I eat breakfast I always feel him/her sometime afterward. Well, this had me a little concerned so I laid down on the bed with no distractions around me and tried to poke him/her a little bit. Still nothing. I got up and took a shower, moved around a lot. Still nothing. So then I really got concerned and ate lunch and laid back down on my left side and poked/prodded again. STILL nothing and it was 12:30. So I got into panic mode and went to the hospital. I called Jeremiah and told him, but I really didn't think (well, hoped) it would turn into something big so I told him to stay at work and I just update him frequently.

I got to L&D around 1:00 and they immediately hooked me up to monitors and placed one thing on my belly to monitor the baby's heart rate and another to monitor for contractions. I was thinking "I'm not having contractions, but okay". The nurse asked me did I feel my stomach tightening up at all, and I said no, I don't feel anything. When she turned up the baby's heart rate so I could hear it, it was the sweetest sound in the whole world! It was the greatest feeling to know that our precious little baby was okay! The nurse came in and asked me again was I sure I wasn't feeling my stomach getting tight, again I said no. She said well, you are having contractions. I was seriously stunned. How in the world could I not feel any of them?

I got really scared when the nurse came in and said she needed to call my OB b/c of the contractions, so I called Jeremiah and he came to the hospital. She gave me a dose of Terbutaline at 2:00 to stop the contractions. The medicine worked almost immediately. Each contraction was 2 min. apart from the last one, so they were pretty regular. But thank the Lord that my cervix was not dilated at all, so I wasn't really considered to be in preterm labor. I just had preterm contractions, which could have been due to me being dehydrated. I'm supposed to be drinking one glass of fluid for every hour I'm awake. Yikes! That's a lot of drinks!

They monitored me for about 2 more hours, then sent me home. I asked why Sweet Pea didn't move in 3 hours, which is not normal for him/her. The nurse didn't know why, but I definitely think s/he was telling me "something's wrong in here and you need to go have it checked out!!" Smart little thing already! =)