It’s nearly 4:30am. I’ve been awake for 2 hours now. Most nights I would just attribute this to pregnancy insomnia, but I think my mind is definitely not focusing on sleep. It’s been a weird day in the land of fetus gestation.

The past couple of weeks have been insane. Non-stop house preparations, and more uncomfortable everything in the baby department. He felt like he’d moved head down, but with that move came more lightning crotch (cervix hits, and plenty) and also a lot more pressure. Walking to work from Abby’s daycare has been taking me twice as long, with plenty of near stopping just to make the pressure go away.

I brought all of this up to John the Midwife today at my 31 week appointment. We both agreed that it was just second pregnancy fun (he suggested I invest in a pregnancy support belt) and we carried on with the exam.

Sure enough, baby boy IS now head down (one good thing), and low. John checked me for any signs of cervical change (last week was thick and normal), and it took him for what felt like forever, before he declared that things were starting to change. It was soft and maybe 1cm dilated. For anyone playing along at home, I didn’t really have any issues of this sort until about 33 weeks with Abby, so things are happening a little more quickly this time. John seemed concerned. He told me to take the day off work and ordered a Betamethasone shot (read: steroid) to mature baby’s lungs, in case shit hits the fan and I go into labor in the next few weeks.

(Sidenote: HOLY MOTHER OF GOD did that shot hurt. Like, the Rhogam shot in the ass hurts pretty bad, but this was like someone injected a shot of fireball into my buttcheek. It’s STILL sore.)

I came home from my appointment to an evening of Braxton Hicks that warranted a chat with the on-call midwife, as I had 8-9 per hour for about 90 minutes. Eventually they calmed down, but I felt crampy for the rest of the night. The in-laws picked up Abby, where she spent the night and will spend the day so I can rest. Which brings us to…now. Me, on the couch because I can’t sleep, writing a blog post.

But..that’s not the end of it. Tomorrow (well, I guess today – HI NEARLY 5 AM) I’m to rest all day, and then at 5:30pm, I’m supposed to go to triage at labor & delivery to get hooked up to monitors to see if I’m contracting, get a second Betamethasone shot, a fetal fibronectin test (which could only serve to be helpful if it’s negative), and have another cervix check. I’m really wary of another check, simply because of how much the last one hurt, and the amount of contractions I had just a few hours afterwards.

Did I mention our house goes on the market in the next 48 hours?

Yeah, I’m not falling asleep anytime soon.