Labor & Delivery Visit

Well so it happened, our 1st trip to labor and delivery with our little princess, I was hoping that we would get to avoid going to the hospital until a little closer to her delivery date but looks like she wanted us to have a little reminder of what happen to us last time with our boys. Last Sunday, Jan 13th I started having lower back pains that would last a few seconds to several minutes in the evening as well as some minor cramping in my lower abdominal area, I didn't think much of it thinking it was possibly a braxton hick but my tummy wasn't getting hard like when I had my braxton hicks with the boys and since they are all I have to compare to it, I didn't know what to expect. Then Monday rolled around and I kept having more and more of the pains, but I wasn't really timing them or keeping track of how far apart they were. By now Monday has come and gone and Tuesday had now approached. In the morning I mentioned to Shauna how I had been feeling and she asked if I should go to the hospital and I told her I was going to call my OB before doing anything. I called them after their lunch was over and they took my message to the Nurse Practitioner who always sees me, she said that she thinks I need to go to the hospital just to make sure because of my previous history she wanted to make sure I wasn't contracting. We arrived at the hospital around 630pm, Shauna left work early so she could go with me. They got my previous history and started to hook me up to the monitors. The nurse, who was awesome by the way, said that the pains  I was feeling could be round ligament pains since they aren't consistent but the monitor will tell us whats really going on. I did a urine sample and we listened to McKenzie's heart rate for a quick second then hooked up to the contraction monitor. She monitored me for about 20 mins and saw some irritation of my uterus going on (which basically means mild contractions) She called my OB he requested that I get a shot to stop the irritability and for me to be checked to make sure I wasn't dilating. I wasn't!! which is awesome!!! She gave me the shot, which is quite horrible and just the way I remembered them last time with the boys. She said she would monitor me for 30 minutes then we will go from there, after the 30 minutes was over she said I still had some irritation so we went with another shot, 30 minutes passed and she said that she wanted to give me the 3rd shot just to be on the safe side but she only saw mild irritation this time around. I got the 3rd shot and we were discharged to go home after about 3 hours. She said that this didn't mean that McKenzie is coming early so not to worry and that if I have more than 5 in an hour and I can not make them subside with lots of water, laying on my side, and making sure my bladder is empty then come back in. I'm glad its all over and hope we never have to do it again but glad we went to make sure all was OK. I see my Dr on the 28th so I will talk to them then about precautions in the future.