I thought it was all kicking off in the night. I awoke to pain and contraction, a weird wave sensation and a stabbing in my cervix. And it kept going. It faded and returned. Things continued this way for some time. I thought ‘this must be it’. And then I thought ‘FUCK, THIS MUST BE IT’. And then I thought ‘it’s okay, it’ll be over soon’. And then I thought ‘FUCK, WHEN IT’S OVER, I’LL HAVE A BABY’.
So I lay there, silently chanting the instruction to myself to allow, allow, allow. I visualised the wave passing through me, downwards, and I allowed it with all the openness I could muster. I made space for it and nothing else.
Even though he’s overdue, I hadn’t expected it to start yet. My bet was placed on the weekend. But it seemed very much like I was going to be wrong about that. And so I thought ‘okay, I guess he’s on his way’, reminding myself that this is a good thing, because I want a home birth, and my cut off for having a home birth is probably the end of Saturday, or maybe even before that depending on how the midwives’ shifts work.
After a while, I got up, and the cat got up with me. It was 3:30am. I went to the toilet, and then I sat in my chair in the living room, not really doing anything, and the cat sat with me. And nothing happened. I was fine. No pain. Just the standard squirming and occasional tightness. I was very hungry and thirsty, so I had a pint of water and some biscuits, and half an hour later I returned to bed, still thinking I must have entered the realm of early labour.
And it all returned not long after I lay down. So surely, surely, this was the start of something.
But, it seems, it wasn’t. Because while my sleep was interrupted with pain through the rest of the morning, I haven’t felt anything significant since about 9am.
Just another warm up, I guess.