"Can you feel those?"

Last night I had a breastfeeding anxiety dream. I dreamed that I had had Ivy and was trying to feed her but I was having all kinds of trouble. Part of the trouble was that I was holding her but she wasn't really there. That didn't bother me though, except for when I'd forget to hold my arm crooked like she was in it - I was doing other things like walking or gardening and kept forgetting that I was also trying to breastfeed.

When I woke up, my blood pressure was slightly elevated but not that bad - but then when I got to the appointment it was 134/98. So they kinda freaked out and had me go do more preeclampsia labs. I showed the doctor my at-home chart but I think she wanted to be safe and had me go across to the lab anyway. (And of course it was back down to the normal range again this evening.)

The rest of the appointment was fine - Ivy was nice and busy, and everything looked good. Then the doctor said "can you feel those contractions?" and showed me a few gently sloping areas of the contraction line. I asked if they seemed to have any rhyme or reason (by which I meant "are they Braxton-Hicks?" but she just said that they were pretty far apart. Then I remembered waking up in the middle of the night because of a thunderstorm, and feeling what felt like period cramps that were stronger than what I thought I was feeling last week - these were sharper. Still not enough to hurt, though they were a little annoying. Didn't stop me from sleeping though.

So now I wait for the labs to come back. I'm pretty sure they would have called me today if my levels were up, and I didn't hear anything. I'm excited to know that things are happening, but I know that it could still be awhile before real labor starts. But next time I'm hooked up to the monitor, I'm going to be paying much more attention to that contraction line!