Contraction City!

I am currently coming out an Ambien induced sleep after being up all night with contractions. Forget the classic water gushing out in public, panting screaming for 4 hours, ending with the screaming baby scenario. I spent Saturday from 10 am until Sunday at 2 am on the couch watching tv and writing down the time that each cramp started. Of course I felt like a nervous nelly having my doctor paged, but I kept thinking if I try to tough it out, and my water breaks and I end up giving birth in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot at 3am, I'm not going to feel to good about that either.
By about 2 am I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, so we made the call, packed up the hospital bag, diaper bag, insurance cards and boom box and drove over. I had a bad contraction right as I walked through the front door and had to hold onto the desk as I gasped out my name. We got settled into a room and two nurses came in to prod around my cervix for a while. I'm getting used to it by now, but I still feel like a farm animal when someone does that. I drank a glass of water, then a glass of cranberry juice and then they asked me to walk around the Labor ward for an hour to get my cervix to open.
So Chris and I shuffled around in circles for about an hour like a couple of centengenarians, stopping in the middle each time to check out the incubator room to see if we could see any newborns. Finally after an hour and about 10 more contractions I still wasn't dilated so the Doctor sent me home to sleep with a couple of tabs of Ambien. Things got foggy after that. It seemed like every time I turned my head to change the direction I was walking in, it would take my body a bit to get the drift. I should be a responsible adult today and finish my taxes before I go back into the hospital, but I don't trust my math right now.

Contraction City!