B-I-N-G-Oh, is that a contraction?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

For a while now, I've been having intermittent Braxton-Hicks contractions (they're like the Casper the Friendly Ghost of labor pains) and sundry other random baby-related pains. I didn't have my first major "Oh holy bleep is this a real contraction????" freak out, however, until two weeks ago, when Chris was driving us home from my baby shower in San Diego and I was mildly suspicious that my water was going to break on our two hour drive through a mountain range, because why not? That's the kind of luck I have.

It wasn't just unwarranted paranoia, I'll have you know. I was genuinely concerned because the waves of discomfort I was feeling could have been labor. With Madelynn, I went to bed thinking that I just didn't feel good, and sat up in bed a few hours later in a pool of my very own amniotic fluid. Nine hours and one epidural later, I was a Mommy.

My son, the meatloaf, was already a week late when I went to my doctor to beg and plead with him. After the doc, um, investigated the goings-on, he told me that I was neither effaced nor dilated, and we arranged a time a few days from then for me to show up at the hospital and have my labor induced. That very same evening, I remember sitting on the couch feeling really uncomfortable. As much as I hoped it was labor, my doctor had pretty much assured me that my body wasn't going to start the process on it's own, so I just tried to relax. After a few hours of increasing pain, and (skip to the end of the sentence if you get grossed out easily) intermittent amniotic fluid leakage, I showed up at the hospital, where no one believed that I was actually in labor because although I had begun to dilate, my water hadn't completely broken. I assured them that it had, in fact, been leaking, and I think they all just wrote my symptom off as incompetent bladder, but they let me change into a hospital gown because I was so enormously huge and in some sort of pain, labor or otherwise. Was I surprised when my water finally broke completely and I flooded the cot they had me laying on? No. Were they? Yup! And I bet that to this day, the nurse is cursing the day she had to mop up all that fluid. To this day, I'm cursing the fact that once they finally admitted me to a Real Actual Labor Room, it was too late to do a Real Actual Epidural. And I was Really Actually Pissed. Wait, I take that back. At the time, I didn't have the energy to be angry. It was too much work birthing my almost-ten-pound baby. Hang on a second, let that last sentence sink in. Here it is, one more time. It was too much work birthing my almost-ten-pound baby.

So, you can imagine my commitment to catching that pesky labor as soon as it begins, so that I may hopefully partake of any and all medication designed to ease the baby-passing process. I've felt things in the last two weeks that have made me fold over in half like I was punched in the gut, that have made me catch my breath, that have caused an audible "OW!" that I didn't have time to hold back. Reagan's head is down in the "OK GO" position, and sometimes it feels like she's pressing up against my cervix like it's the peephole to the outside world and she's trying to steal a glance. Seriously, it makes me want to go put on a pair of spandex shorts just so I can be sure she doesn't start to army-crawl her way out of my vagina. Sometimes the pressure will be so intense that I literally am afraid to look down, for fear there will be a little goopy baby hand waving at me from between my legs. Or, you know, flipping me the bird.

I feel these phantom contractions often, but I'm only severely uncomfortable when I'm sitting, standing, or laying down. (Yup, that's all. That leaves... um, never?) Every time I feel any flash of pain, I check the time, so if it does happen to be a contraction, I'll know how far apart they are. I've even taking to jinxing myself- because I do have the worst luck ever, I'm tempting Murphy's Law into making me have this baby. Just today I told Chris "Do you want me to fake going into labor so you don't have to go to work?" Come on, if that's not jinxing myself, I don't know what is.

The weird part? I'm praying for it to happen! I am so miserable, physically and especially emotionally, that I just want to get Reagan here. I am a hormonal wreck- there has to be something like Pre-Partum Depression, and I am the Brooke Shields of it. Aside from the two days Chris and I spent in Santa Monica last week, the only time I have consciously thought "Cervix stay put!" was when I was watching a TiVo'd episode of National Bingo Night and playing along with the bingo cards I printed out from the website.

So, what gives? What's wrong with me? I don't want the birth of my baby to interfere with National Friggen Bingo Night??? I'm sure most Bingo Addicts are worried that it's going to conflict with their great-grandchildren coming to visit them in the nursing home, not with childbirth.

Well, what have I left to say? I've already talked about amniotic fluid and babies reaching out of vaginas, let alone divulged my National Bingo Night guilty pleasure. Really, the sad part? I could keep going for hours. It's nearing 11, I think I'm going to try to get myself to bed. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll wake up in a pool of amniotic fluid! Or maybe if I'm really really lucky, I'll wake up in a pool of Golden Spoon Frozen Yogurt. Either way...