No one's gonna read this...

(so I slipshodded it).

Once upon a time my car kept making this weirdly mesmerizing noise that sounded like a bird chirping under the hood. It went on for months, because whenever I tried to demonstrate for someone who might be able to diagnose the sound or at least reassure me that I wasn’t having auditory hallucinations, the bird fell silent. So I finally started turning the radio up loud enough to drown out the bird, and eventually, it stopped. (And people tell me my “ignore it and it’ll go away” philosophy is ill-conceived.)

So yesterday when I went to the doctor after having a two-day-long Braxton-Hicks-contraction party, I was pretty sure I would leave with a big HYPOCHONDRIAC stamp on my forehead and that people would point and laugh me all my red-faced way to the parking lot. Even though Dr. Pretty Cool (yes, he used to be Dr. Awesome; long story) told me specifically that he wanted to know if I ever had six in one hour, I felt silly when I handed him my crumpled-up piece of paper with a list of times jotted down, front and back, detailing what my uterus had been up to all day.

Forget six in one hour; I’m an overachiever. I had eight, then five, then seven. One of them hit when I was waddling down the crosswalk toward my doctor’s office and took my breath away. Some of them were even kind of painful, although when asked that very question I brave-little-soldiered it and labeled them “a little uncomfortable.”

Also, perhaps because Nurse Always-Has-To-Comment-On-My-Weight-Gain said as she was slapping the blood pressure cuff on me, “Oh yeah, he’s gonna want to do a cervix check for sure; that doesn’t look good,” my first BP reading was high. Not as high as it was when I had pregnancy-induced hypertension with Alex, but high enough to earn a neon-green sticky note at the top of my chart.

So Dr. Pretty Cool came in and said, “Why are you trying to get your blood pressure all riled up?” and I wasn’t in the mood to get that he was joking so I said “I’m not!” so defensively that he chuckled and patted my arm reassuringly (but not patronizingly, which earned him at least one Awesome point back).

And then he informed me that these contractions were in fact “doing something”—I was 1.5 centimeters dilated (hey, less work to do later!). He sent me down for a non-stress test to monitor the contractions and my blood pressure. I was probably lying in the very bed my sister had just vacated, as she had the time slot right before me even though our paths didn’t cross this time.

I have to admit feeling slightly vindicated every time I had a contraction that showed up on the little scroll of paper coming out of the machine. It wasn't in my head! Nurse Carol even praised me for being in tune with my body. (Yeah, well, I’ve known that since I shoved a very-obviously-negative pregnancy test under Steven’s nose and said, “IT’S LYING. Trust me.”)

Nurse Carol, by the way, sat by my bed the whole time, and God bless her I wanted her to go away and leave me to watch Holmes on Homes and the fetal/contraction monitor in peace. But no, she wanted to talk about blood bank errors, incompetent fellow nurses, her two children (both born in March and both fans of Thai food!!!), and winning a third-karat diamond ring in a Cracker Jack box in some McRae’s find-the-diamond promotion years ago.

When she got onto how she’d canceled her subscription to Coastal Living three years ago because there wasn’t enough Gulf Coast coverage, I stopped listening so I wouldn’t snap at her.

After half an hour I’d had five good contractions, baby’s heart rate looked good, and my blood pressure had settled down. Nurse Carol called my doctor and he ordered terbutaline to make my uterus stoppit. That stuff burns like a _____ going in and then makes you jittery and shaky as your pulse rate shoots through the roof. Fun stuff.

But it worked. I had to lie there for another half hour or so with Nurse Carol chattering away as we waited for Dr. Pretty Cool to come down and look at my scroll, write a prescription for the pill form of the magic medicine, and pronounce me “good to go.” He said Nurse Carol had saved me a trip to L&D for IV fluids, so I guess I should cut her some slack for talking my ear off.

I hope my next appointment (scheduled for next week, quite possibly at the same time my sister is having her C-section) is a little bit smoother.

Now I'm under orders to rest as much as possible and drink lots of water. There's water in Diet Dr Pepper, right?