My uterus is a big fat liar.

We had our first (and God willing, our last) experience with "false labor" yesterday (insert super-peeved-looking face here). I was having contractions all night Sunday into Monday, starting at around midnight and waking me up two or three times an hour for the rest of the night. It was enough tightening+cramping to wake me up in discomfort, so I felt like that was promising. I had my regularly scheduled weekly check-up with the midwives on Monday morning so, given how things were going, I had Ben stay home from work and go with me just in case. We even packed our hospital bags into the car, but I was trying not to get too excited.

Sure enough, at my appointment I was 90% effaced (no dilation yet, but the midwife assured me that effacement usually happens first with first pregnancies) and after hearing my description of the night's events, she said that I was probably in early labor. Wahoo! She advised me to go home, take some long walks, take a shower, make sure I ate something, and come back when the contractions were 5 minutes apart for an hour and taking my breath away. We live about 45 minutes from where the doctor's office and hospital are, so rather than go all the way home we went over to my sister-in-law's (who lives in the area) and had lunch with her and her hubby, and then went to a local park to take a LONG walk. I definitely found that the walking increased the frequency of the contractions and they started getting more painful, so we started to feel very hopeful. They were still at least 15 minutes apart and rather irregular (sometimes as long as 30 minutes apart), so we decided to go home and shower and have some dinner. The contractions definitely slowed a bit while we were at home just sitting, so we went out again to an outdoor shopping area nearby to walk some more. Again, same result - the walking definitely increased the frequency and intensity - and again, we were hopeful. We were pretty convinced that we'd be heading to the hospital sometime in the middle of the night. We were SO excited to finally be on the verge of meeting our little guy!

Except that once I went to sleep for the night, that was all she wrote. I actually slept quite well, which I knew was bad news, and I haven't had a single contraction all flippin' day. I even went out walking and shopping for a good 3 hours and still, nothing :'( All I accomplished was spending some money on myself and the baby, and drowning my disappointment in a grande decaf caramel macchiato and an Auntie Anne's cinnamon pretzel. SWEET.

False labor is the worst.