I'm about to page my mw about this, but I thought it would be good to get a few other perspectives, especially since I'm calling it in as "non-urgent" and I'm not sure how long a response will take.
I'm currently 37 weeks pg (37 +3). My past full-term births have happened at 38, 38.5, and 37 weeks. With those labours, I didn't have any prelabour contractions -- once the "real" ctx (not BH) started, they kept on until I gave birth. That took about 12, 12, and 4.5 hours with each of my labours.
With this pregnancy, however, I've had BH from early on (mid-first trimester) and plenty of them. And starting around 36 weeks (maybe a bit before), I've had some real contractions. Usually pretty mild, mostly sporadic throughout the day, but I'll occasionally have 30-40 mins of them coming 3-6 mins apart... and then they stop. Freaked me out at first, and I made sure to do very little when they were happening before 37 weeks, but I'm not so concerned about having the baby now (I couldn't homebirth if I went into labour before 37 weeks).
So, that's my long-winded history. My situation today is I have plans to visit my mom and sister. They're about 40 mins from us, 30 mins outside of the city on backroads. I've been having contractions this morning (and last night and yesterday), still fairly mild. They really picked up when my daughter nursed for a while after waking up, and I stayed sitting down for a while after that. (ETA: I've nursed through my pregnancies with my second and third children, and didn't have ctx like this before labour.) After some time (maybe 1/2 hour?) I decided to start timing them. I had 8 ctx over the next 40 mins, which were 3-7 mins apart. Very easy to deal with the pain, but they were definitely coming and going regularly. I got up to do a few things, and had a few more contractions on and off, but they seemed to slow down. I'm getting BH ctx in between them as well, and feeling some pressure down low. The baby may have dropped last night -- my heartburn has been better, and I'm feeling more pressure down low, and more kicks/rolls/pushes up against my bladder. Baby still seems to be able to move so that his back is sometimes on my left, sometimes my right, sometimes in the middle. I can't really tell how easy it is to move the head, partly because it's difficult to reach and partly because messing around too much bugs my uterus and it responds by getting hard enough that I can't feel much anymore.
I haven't had an increase in discharge or any bloody show -- in fact, I seem to have had less cm on average over the last week.
Would I be taking a risk driving myself and my kids out to visit family? I'm pretty sure my mw could come if I went into labour at my parents' -- we lived there for a month when we first moved here, and that was in the mw's catchement area. They said I should be sure to call early rather than late, but that the distance wasn't a problem. I'm more concerned about the actual travelling (I don't have a cell phone). At the same time, these ctx could fizzle out again like all of the other ones so far and I don't want to put our lives on hold for another month if that's when the baby ends up coming. I'm not sure if I'm being overly emotional and overly worried, or what, so I'm looking for some more objective opinions.
I'm currently 37 weeks pg (37 +3). My past full-term births have happened at 38, 38.5, and 37 weeks. With those labours, I didn't have any prelabour contractions -- once the "real" ctx (not BH) started, they kept on until I gave birth. That took about 12, 12, and 4.5 hours with each of my labours.
With this pregnancy, however, I've had BH from early on (mid-first trimester) and plenty of them. And starting around 36 weeks (maybe a bit before), I've had some real contractions. Usually pretty mild, mostly sporadic throughout the day, but I'll occasionally have 30-40 mins of them coming 3-6 mins apart... and then they stop. Freaked me out at first, and I made sure to do very little when they were happening before 37 weeks, but I'm not so concerned about having the baby now (I couldn't homebirth if I went into labour before 37 weeks).
So, that's my long-winded history. My situation today is I have plans to visit my mom and sister. They're about 40 mins from us, 30 mins outside of the city on backroads. I've been having contractions this morning (and last night and yesterday), still fairly mild. They really picked up when my daughter nursed for a while after waking up, and I stayed sitting down for a while after that. (ETA: I've nursed through my pregnancies with my second and third children, and didn't have ctx like this before labour.) After some time (maybe 1/2 hour?) I decided to start timing them. I had 8 ctx over the next 40 mins, which were 3-7 mins apart. Very easy to deal with the pain, but they were definitely coming and going regularly. I got up to do a few things, and had a few more contractions on and off, but they seemed to slow down. I'm getting BH ctx in between them as well, and feeling some pressure down low. The baby may have dropped last night -- my heartburn has been better, and I'm feeling more pressure down low, and more kicks/rolls/pushes up against my bladder. Baby still seems to be able to move so that his back is sometimes on my left, sometimes my right, sometimes in the middle. I can't really tell how easy it is to move the head, partly because it's difficult to reach and partly because messing around too much bugs my uterus and it responds by getting hard enough that I can't feel much anymore.
I haven't had an increase in discharge or any bloody show -- in fact, I seem to have had less cm on average over the last week.Would I be taking a risk driving myself and my kids out to visit family? I'm pretty sure my mw could come if I went into labour at my parents' -- we lived there for a month when we first moved here, and that was in the mw's catchement area. They said I should be sure to call early rather than late, but that the distance wasn't a problem. I'm more concerned about the actual travelling (I don't have a cell phone). At the same time, these ctx could fizzle out again like all of the other ones so far and I don't want to put our lives on hold for another month if that's when the baby ends up coming. I'm not sure if I'm being overly emotional and overly worried, or what, so I'm looking for some more objective opinions.
I guess my house can't get too much more trashed... I'll see if I can try that, and if they go away, I'll stop worrying so much.
