Off to the Maternity Ward

So last night we went for a quick trip to the maternity ward.

All day I had been having lots and lots of Braxton Hicks contractions, I get them quite frequently normally but nothing like what I was getting yesterday – particularly last night.

At nine o’clock after having had at least 15 Braxton Hicks in the previous hour, some that appeared to start just after the last one stopped, I thought I had better ring up the hospital to see if that was normal. I was a little surprised when they said that I should come down and get it checked out to make sure that I wasn’t in premature labour at 32 weeks. So we jumped in the car and headed to Warragul where the lovely midwife Helen put me on a monitor that measured but Ernie’s heartbeat and the pressure of the contractions. Of course I hardly had any contractions then, did I – which was typical. After about half an hour and only one or two contractions that were even remotely close to the pressure required for a proper contraction, Helen told me that it looked like everything was okay and I was allowed to go home. If I had been having normal contractions every 5 minutes or so I would have been sent to Melbourne where they would be better equipped to handle an 8 week prem baby. Needless to say the midwives who were there all suggested that I may want to get my bag packed ready just in case.  Let’s hope that we don’t need it.

On the positive side we got to finally see the new maternity ward which hadn’t been opened when we were having our tour of the hospital a few weeks ago. I can now also say I’ve actually been in one of the birthing rooms and know what to expect now when I really do need to go there. This makes me feel more comfortable about what needs to happen.