It's the Final Countdown...

39 weeks on the nose, (I roll over to a new week every Sunday), and I woke up this morning around 2 a.m. with unpleasant cramping sensations in my enormous baby gut. I lay in bed for a while, psyching myself out of getting excited about it because I hate disappointment and I know it's very common for women to believe they're in labor when they are anything but. "Vanessa," I said (to myself), "Chances are, these are just warm up contraction thingies and not the real deal."

They continued for about an hour. I didn't bother timing them because I could tell they weren't super-regular. But I couldn't sleep through them. Suckers HURT. So instead, as good practice for the real thing, I focused on them and told my cervix to open through them. Nothing says "FUN!" like sending your internal organs telepathic messages. Around 3, I got up to go to the bathroom. As I was doing the necessary, I continued my this is probably not labor pep talk to myself. "After all," I said, "you haven't lost your mucous plug. Your water hasn't broken. Etc etc."

Then I got up, and I realized - um. I HAD lost my mucous plug. Probably while I was pep-talking to myself. I burst into a fit of the giggles. 3 a.m. is not the time when one wants to be confronted with their mucous plug, but let's face it. This was not the worst thing to happen to me this pregnancy.

I briefly toyed with the notion of waking Sandy up to say, "Happy Father's Day! I got you a mucous plug!" but decided against it.

I grabbed a pad, just in case that wasn't the end of it, and I went back to bed. The sucky cramping contractions continued until about 4, though they got further and further apart. Evidently they had done what they intended to do. And that was that. I fell back asleep.

Rhys has been quite feisty this morning, and so has my uterus, but I'm not in labor yet. Just the same old, same old Braxton Hicks fake out contractions. So, I'm keeping busy. After all, you can walk around for weeks after losing the mucous plug before going into true labor. Still, it's a good sign that things are moving along, and I will take any encouraging little sign I can get at this point!