False alarm #1

I woke up at 4 a.m. with cramps — nothing weird or serious, but the kind of low-grade menstrual cramps that tend to make me cranky without interfering with day-to-day activities. But I started wondering: Is this the beginning of labor? That and a few other symptoms (which I won't post for the world to read, thanks) got me to the point where I called my doctor's office this afternoon. The doctor's out of the office for Christmas vacation, of course, so I got one of the nurses, who said: Go into the hospital, preferably within the next hour.

Our much-too-kind friends Jen and Charles came over to watch Beth, and we ended up sitting in the hospital for close to four hours. Overall it wasn't too vastly unpleasant. I've been reading Orson Scott Card's Enchantment out loud to Scott, so we did a chapter or so of that; the computers and labs were up and running, so even though they were swamped the wait wasn't quite as brutal as it was the last time we were there in April of 2005; and we saw my favorite nurse from my previous hospital stay, who's now working triage. The doctor who examined me was kind and funny and gave me good stories about my own OB, who she helped train. And yes, it was a false alarm.

Nevertheless...Scott says he's giving me three of these before he starts calling me "She Who Cries Wolf." (You have nothing to worry about, sweetie.)