I’m 39w4d, and Yesterday at 4pm I had a second membrane sweep done at my regulate drs appointment and I was 3cm dilated and 60% effaced, my cervix was posterior but soft. Immediately after the sweep I had strong pains that felt like menstrual cramps but they were manageable and I fell asleep at 9pm. I woke up at 2:30am with pains again, but then the pains became more regularly spaced to every 5 minutes. Then came the belly tightness, and radiating pain from the back and the level of intensity began to get greater and the time started to shorten to 3-5 min. I called labor and delivery and asked what they recommended I do and they said wait one more hour and see how it goes. I waited two hours, but the contractions weren’t letting up so I called them one more time and told them I had contractions for 3 hours and they told me I should come in to get evaluated. When I got there they did an initial check to see how far I had dilated from yesterday. They said I had dilated 1/2 a centimeter since 4pm yesterday. They wanted to keep me for a couple hours and see if I would dilate any further. Two hours later, I walked around, danced in the hospital room, and tried everything I could to keep the dilation progressing. When they checked me again for dilation I had made it to 4cm, but at the same time my contractions were slowing to 8-12 minutes. They told me to go home and get some rest and come back if the contractions picked back up. So at 10am I went back home, took some Benadryl to sleep through some of the pain, and woke up at 3:30pm. I’m still having terrible cramps/pains when I move that last for 1 minute intervals every half hour or so but other than that I have no signs my baby’s coming today.

I’m so disappointed. I was so excited that labor was finally here and happy to think that today might have been the day to meet my baby boy. Plus it was 6 hours of pretty exhausting pain for only one centimeter of dilation. Such a let down...