10 Days!

Ten more days. T-E-N. Ten days til Valentines Day for you normal people who aren't carrying around a baby in their tummy. As for Louis and I, it is ten days until our precious daughter's due date! Not that a "due date" really means much, because hardly any babies are actually born on the predicted date. Take Jeremiah, for example. He was due on Thanksgiving Day 2007, November 22 (what is it with me conceiving babies who have due dates on holidays?!). November 22 came and went. As did the next 9 days that followed November 22, until December 2, the day he decided he had enough of Mommy's cozy belly and wanted to enter the big, bright world. So who knows when his little sister is going to make her grand entrance. Something always told me that Jeremiah was going to be at least a little late, so I wasn't too surprised that he didn't come right away. As for this little gal, I have thought all along that she would come early.

And she almost did.

Tuesday night started out as a wonderful evening here at the Castillo household. I finally made the corned beef that has been sitting in my freezer for a few months, and that I have been dying to make. It came out delicious. Louis and I curled up in front of the TV with our delicious dinner, and settled down to eat and watch the previous night's new episode of "2 1/2 Men" and that night's "American Idol." That's when all the fun began. I started getting lots of contractions- big, big contractions that wouldn't stop coming. Two hours later I was on the brink of tears, so I told Louis we better pack our hospital bag, just in case. The next day was laundry day, so most of the things we had to throw in the bag wasn't the cleanest. Anyway, I decided to call the dr. just to see what he wanted me to do- labor at home for a little longer, or go to the hospital. Judging from the fact that I was crying on the phone, he told me to get to the hospital ASAP. One hour later, after my mother in law arrived at our house to stay with Jeremiah, we made it to the hospital. And that's when everything stopped.

STOPPED.

All that pain, all that labor for nothing. Not just nothing- I didn't even begin to dilate a little! Not even a smidge! The nurses kept me for observation for the next 3 hours to see if anything would change, but nope- our daughter thought she played an excellent joke on Mommy and Daddy. We got to the hospital at 10:30 pm and walked through our door at 1:30 a.m.

I hate false alarms.

But what I hate even worse than false alarms are mommies that have to share my triage room, who come crying and practically screaming, and are already dilated to 7 cm, while I'm hooked up to a monitor, praying that those awful contractions that went away come back. Because massive pain sounded pretty good at that point.

We're 100 percent ready for this baby. In the past two weeks we had three fantastic baby showers. Our daughter has more clothes than she is probably going to be able to wear, tons of diapers for her little tushie, bottles, blankets, burp cloths, you name it she has it. Our hospital bag is re-packed, filled with plenty of clean clothes for us. Jeremiah's bag is packed as well. We have a bag of lunchables and snacks in our fridge for Louis to munch on when I'm laboring (something we didn't have on Tuesday night). We're all set and ready to go. I know I should take the next few days leading up to her birth enjoying the last days of having Jeremiah be an only child, of being able to nap when he naps, of having one independent kid to care for rather than a toddler and a needy newborn, of being able to sleep through the entire night. But I just want to hold her already!