Laborious Days

Our journey over the last few days has felt long and may just prove to be days longer. On Thursday evening, around 5:00, I started to have regular contractions that were about 5 minutes apart and lasted for about a minute each. They weren't very intense though, and I could talk and walk through them so we spent the evening at home resting and waiting to see what happened.
Friday morning, after 15 hours of pretty regular contractions that still didn't feel very strong but were getting stronger so we decided to go in, check my blood pressure and see where we were at knowing we'd probably get sent home unless my blood pressure was too high. Here's a snapshot on the way out of the house...
Sure enough, sent off to have a good breakfast and told to sleep as much as we could today. I had made some progress since Tuesday; on Friday morning I was dilated to a 1 - not much, but some progress! Long way to go though, so we headed to Sara's Coffee in Kent to try breakfast there and enjoyed a delicious, fatty, diner-style breakfast before heading home and sleeping soundly for a few hours.



Then we headed out for a walk in the afternoon to the dog park near our house; it was fun to walk and see all the sweet dogs and my contractions really picked up and got uncomfortable and even a little painful at this point... but decreased in intensity awhile after we got done with our walk, so... more waiting!
Saturday afternoon, I instructed Jesse to take a break and go do something fun after a week of working and unpacking, so he headed off to hang out with a friend and mom and I met at Joann's for some odds and ends for some projects to keep me busy while waiting for baby to make her debut! Then she treated me to a delicious peppermint mocha - what a treat and lucky girl I am to have such a fun mom!Then we headed over to a friend's house for our surrogate-grandma's 75th birthday party, which was fun and did great taking our minds off the approaching and unknown date.
I had contractions through the night (Saturday night) and was woken up for the first time with some stronger ones but not so intense or regular that I couldn't eventually fall back asleep. It could be today... or it could still be next week or more, which might make me crazy!! Our due date isn't until next Monday but a full week of regular contractions might drive me to distraction. This waiting game is so hard! - physically and emotionally... I'm trying to think of lots of things to keep us busy and distracted and I'm generally successful but I'm getting tired of the constant reminders my body is giving me of the unknown. It seems like it would be much easier to wait these last days without the frequent contractions. It almost feels like they're taunting me - sometimes they're more intense and almost painful but then another won't come for 5 minutes and will be less intense, and then I'll have one 3 minutes later that's more intense but not so intense I can't manage it. Anyway, I'm just praying the Lord will bring her sooner rather than later because I'm afraid we're going to get more discouraged and tired.
Todays' plan as far as I can make it: church, home to rest, out to Costco for some staples (and some walking!) and home to work on some projects. I decided to make the curtains for the baby's room out of pretty white eyelet so that will be distracting and fun.