Hi there! How’s it going? Allow me to tell you about my action-packed weekend, ok? Ok.

So! Saturday. My awesome cousin offered to pick up Catie and take her to the Got To Be NC Festival because, let’s face it, even though it sounded pretty fun – and, as a bonus, had the promise of copious amounts of fried food – I am in no condition to be hiking all over the NC State Fairgrounds. So I said yes, please, take my kid away from me for a few hours and thank you so much. They set off around 10 a.m., and I promptly went back to bed.

While I was lying down, I started having contractions. I timed them (did you know there’s an app for that? Because of course there is), and found that they were every 20 minutes. Mild but still regularly patterned contractions. That seems promising, no?

I decided to see if I could move things along, so I went downstairs and got on the treadmill. I walked for about 30 minutes, and by then, the contractions were every 10 minutes. Crazy, right? So I told Dave and started making phone calls, and we packed the rest of our stuff, because hey look at that, we might be having a baby today!

Meanwhile, Catie came home, tired and sweaty and happy. (Apparently it was pretty awesome, because she’s been telling me about all of the things she saw and did at the “Festy-buhl” ever since.) We chilled out for a while, and the contractions got a bit stronger and were coming every 7-ish minutes on average. They stayed that way for several hours.

I called my doctor’s after-hours line and talked to the OB on call, and she said not to go to the hospital until my contractions were 3 to 5 minutes apart and I couldn’t walk or talk during them. That sounded… weird to me. I mean, if labor is that intense, shouldn’t I already have my drugs by then? (For the record, no, this isn’t my first baby, but with Catie, my water broke first, so I never had this whole “ooh, is this labor or not?” thing. This is a whole new, unknown world for me.)

Since I was able to be up and about during my contractions, we figured that we still had a long way to go. Dave packed an overnight bag for Catie and we had a back-up plan to get her to my cousin’s house just in case we had to head to the hospital in the middle of the night. Everything was set. So we went to bed.

Or rather, Dave and Catie went to bed. I lay there and couldn’t turn my brain off, and I jumped at every twinge of a contraction. Which I suppose makes sense under the circumstances, but I was beyond exhausted and just needed to sleep. Finally around midnight, I took half of a Xanax (which I’ve really avoided taking since that whole incident back in March, but I’m very thankful that I kept them for emergencies). That finally took the edge off enough that I could go to sleep. I still woke up a lot with the more intense contractions, but I was able to fall right back to sleep.

This morning, contractions were still in the 7-10 minute range, so I tried the treadmill again. I only walked for about 15 minutes before my lower back started to hurt, so I gave up on that. I thought I’d try my prenatal yoga DVD, since that has some good stretches in it, and I thought it might help the baby “drop” more.

So, I did the yoga DVD, and the contractions… stopped. Like, completely. Not even a twinge. Nothing.

What the hell??? How does that even happen?

Did I seriously just experience “false labor” for over 24 hours?

I just… I… WHAT?!?!!

I’m completely and utterly baffled. And kinda pissed. I went through all that pain and discomfort for NOTHING???

I don’t know, y’all. But this baby had better hurry up and make for the exit soon, or she’s going to be in BIG TROUBLE when she finally shows up.