Back. Pain. Sucks.

I accompanied my mom into town this afternoon to stop at Wal-Mart for last minute breast feeding supplies now that I've had a change of heart concerning what I want to do in that department. Once we picked up my little sister Shelby from school we spent several hours at her appointment with the pediatrician to find out she has strep. Me + strep = bad news. Strep and I go way back. So she is not allowed in my room or in my face for the foreseeable future. Once she's had the antibiotics in her system for at least 24 hours she will no longer be considered contagious. Bless her heart; her cough sounds horrible.

We finally got home around 7PM after a quick dinner at McDonald's. (Shelby's favorite place to eat in the entire world.) It was at around this time that the very light, sporadic contractions I'd been having since the waiting room at the pediatrician's office became a little more intense. I began having back pain that just kept getting worse and worse and was so constant it was hard for me to tell when one contraction ended and another began though the contractions themselves were more than tolerable. My mom and I decided to head to the hospital to be monitored and checked to see if I was making any progress since I was having trouble breathing through the back pain by 9PM. I was at the hospital from about 10PM until just past 11PM hooked up to all of the monitors. Anya was moving like crazy insane go nuts so her heartbeat was hard to get a stable reading on, but she is good and healthy. My contractions are apparently anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes apart but really not too intense on the pain scale. The back pain, on the other hand, almost made me throw up it got so bad. They gave me something for the pain and checked to see if I was dilated at all: nope. Nothing. I am apparently in the very early stages of labor. So I have even worse back pain to look forward to. Yay. [/sarcasm]

They sent me home to ride out the contractions in the comfort of my own bed until they get to the point I can longer function through them. I have a heating pad for my back which is actually helping to relieve over 90% of the pain there which makes it easier for me to feel how mild the contractions are and how often they occur. I'll probably be at home for the rest of the night and at least a good part of tomorrow if my contractions don't get any worse than this. I'll just be permanently attached to the heating pad to keep me from panicking about the back pain. I can already tell that it's going to be my demise during active labor. The contractions themselves I'm getting through just fine. But anytime I'm away from the heat pad for too long the back pain gets so bad that I want to cry and throw up. It sucks. I guess it's back to waiting...