Almost Labor

I started having consistent (5 mins or less) contractions Sunday night around 9pm....they continued, and woke me up around 2am. I kept track of them for another hour (3-4 mins apart) and wondered if I should go to work. I ended up calling the on-call midwife at 5:45 and she said it sounded like I could be in early labor but that this could stretch on for quite awhile, so I might as well go to work until I can't ignore the pain to keep me occupied. She also suggest that I get my dilation checked at the clinic if I could get off work in time. So I went to work, but just kept thinking, "it should hurt more than this." That isn't to say I wasn't uncomfortable. My back hurt, my tummy and uterus didn't feel good after a day of contracting with small breaks, unlike the 10-40 min breaks we are used to :) So we went in to get monitored. Hooked up to machines again! I was able to show on paper (hehe pun intended) that my contractions were consistent 3 mins apart, which Matt loved to watch print out. Midwife Liz (one of the really awesome ones) was super nice and comforting, and said they are about medium intensity as far as how tense the muscle is getting. However....I was still only 1 cm dilated. So progress that way wasn't happening...my cervix was also still only about 1/2 shortened. Sigh. I did end up with a very invasive exam, that gave the details that my 1cm was 1cm around the outside, not the inside. I allowed her to basically stretch my cervical opening to an actual centimeter open (not only to help me) to help give a more acurate idea of the length of the cervix. This was VERY painful. I asked her if this was what actual strong, dilating contractions would be like, and she said yes. Epideral is sounding better and better....