Is That What That's Been?

I posted the other day about the contractions I'd had over the course of two days. Come to find out, that's just a fraction of what I've been feeling. When I saw the doctor last Tuesday, the nurse asked me if I was having any braxton hicks contractions. I told her I didn't know, because I didn't know what they were supposed to feel like. She asked a couple more questions and all were about BH, and I told her I had no idea because I didn't know what they felt like!  Following that and a couple days later, I thought I felt some and was excited to talk about it. Sure, those may have been some of the more intense BHs, but little did I know that I'd been feeling them far more frequently, and for far longer, than I even knew.

For a couple weeks now, my stomach will flip into contortionist mode and will look completely twisted and weird, and it gets hard in two spots as if the baby is pushing with his butt on one side, and his head on the other. It's never an even push, either. It is lop-sided and bulgy and bumpy, and sometimes just on one side while the other is completely flat. When this happens, Daddy takes the opportunity to "discipline" our poor son and gives him a little tap on the butt, or, what we've perceived to be the butt, anyway, and then the baby will move around. This happens regularly throughout the day, all day, and it pretty much never quits. I never understood why my baby was trying to tear through my skin by pushing with his little bottom!

Well, yesterday when we went for our checkup, which was highly disappointing to say the very least, the doctor asked if I'd been having lots of baby movement. I told her yes that he was very active and at that moment, he was pushing his little bottom right up against me. She said, "Oh, that's a classic BH contraction." I said, what? She said yeah, and it's a good one!  I said, "That's what those are? I thought he was just pushing his butt up against me!?!" Daddy was just as surprised as me. She told me that a surefire way to tell is the fact that the whole tummy gets hard, as was the case at that very moment. She told us that it was a result of him putting pressure on the uterus, yes, but that indeed it was a BH contraction.

Which leads me to confess that I now know I should not have been nearly as excited as I was those couple of days when I felt the "braxton hicks" contractions. Psh, those were pretty much nothing. And how do I know? Because as of three weeks ago, we are in exactly the same position we were before; 50% effaced and practically zero dilation. I don't know what my son is trying to do to me, except make me work more, but as his daddy says, "That's it; he's grounded. Gotta catch this stuff early..."