oh roo

so roo got us all worked up for nothing. what a little practical joker since last night jer and i told it like 100 times that it needed to stay put until daddy gets back from richmond. keira's recap of the past twelve hours (not for the weak of stomach!): i woke up at 3 a.m. feeling like i had to pee, not uncommon at all these days. but as soon as i stood up out of bed it was like a faucet flowing, like i was peeing in my pants with no control over it. at first i didn't think much of it really because roo has been camped out on my bladder for the past few days (gross, i know, but i'm prego - it happens!), but then i thought maybe my water had broken. i went to the bathroom, cleaned up, sniffed it (again gross, but all the books and the nurses said that you could tell the difference between pee and amniotic fluid by the smell.) i certainly couldn't tell what it was - didn't smell like pee but also didn't smell like clorox or bleach like they say amniotic fluid smells. they also say you can tell by color - pee is yellow and amniotic fluid is clear, but between pink underwear, black shorts, and a hot blue 1970's toilet i have no idea what color this stuff was. so i decided i was just incontinent and went back to bed. but then at 3:30, the whole thing happened again. felt like i had to pee, stood up, whoosh, fluid flowing. this time after cleaning myself up and repeating the completely inconclusive sniff test, i decided to get on the computer and see what "water breaking" is supposed to be like. i read a bunch of articles all saying essentially the same thing - it's not always the massive rush of fluid like on tv, sometimes it is just a regular dribble. that could be me. they described an experiment where you put on a maxi pad, lay on your side for 30 minutes, and then stand up and see if you get wet (sounds kinda like what i already did on my own, but i decided to give it a try.) this is about when i got jer up (4 a.m.) because i had to turn on the bedroom light to find another dry pair of underwear. he was sleepy but stayed awake with me for the 30 minutes. not surprisingly when i stood up 30 minutes later, another whoosh. and this time it was sort of pinkish in color. we then repeated it again just to be sure. jer decided it was time to call the 24-hour baby hotline at the hospital. i didn't want to because i didn't want to admit that it might be time, but he totally made the right decision. he called while i got cleaned up again. this second time i noticed that the fluid still had a pinkish tinge to it and there was some bloody mucusy stuff in there. i was now on board with the plan - this could be the ol' bloody show. while i quickly showered and packed a hospital bag, jeremy started to rebook his flight and the uhaul type truck we had rented for tomorrow. (remember there's still stuff in our house in richmond, so the plan was for jer to fly down during his vacation, load up a truck, and drive it back up here.) he easily got the flight rebooked online but had to wait a bit for the truck since they were not open at 5 a.m. jer called them from the road a little while later and switched the truck to next week as well. we also realized what a mess we are - we have a lot on our to-do lists like pack hospital bag, wash baby clothes, make sure there's gas in the car, etc. - none of it done! but by 6:30 we were on the road to boston. that's around the same time i started having little tiny contractions. not too painful - felt like a cramp or gas pain - that would last about 30-60 seconds each, but they continued like clockwork, every 15 minutes until we got to the hospital at 9. we thought for sure this was it. we got checked in at the triage part of labor and delivery. they hooked me up to monitors to measure roo's heartbeat and my contractions. roo was chugging right along and i had a couple more small contractions but they basically stopped as soon as we got there. they did the tests jeremy described and didn't quite know what to make of me since they could see the copious amounts of watery mucusy stuff coming out but no evidence that it was amniotic fluid. as the midwife said, i'm an enigma. :) once the ultrasound proved that my water did not break, the doctor ok-ed us to go home and said that the leakage is probably the mucus plug breaking down. it's just really watery for some weird reason. enigma :) so no roo today, but i bet soon. it was good to have a dry run because now i am definitely motivated to check all those things off the to-do list. and next time hopefully we'll remember to bring the camera! so we're now back in western mass. i'm taking it super easy. jeremy switched his flight and the truck back to tomorrow, so seriously roo... STAY PUT!