A very scary night...

So, I was leaving my office Monday night when all of a sudden it felt like the baby dropped into my pelvis and lodged there and I started feeling contractions. Now, this was a day when I had walked a ton - several miles between walking to the metro and wandering around town to meetings - so I figured that I had overdone it and needed to rest.

I must have looked pretty awful, because several solicitous passersby stopped to ask me if I was OK.

Hopped on the train, sat down, and the contractions just kept getting worse and more intense. In a rare display of common sense, I called my husband to say I wasn't going to be able to make the 3/4 mile walk home from the Metro, asking him to pick me up.

Arrived home and did exactly what I was supposed to do. Lay down on my left side. Guzzled water. Waited for the contractions to stop.

Except they didn't. They got worse. And more regular. And more intense.10 minutes apart. 8 minutes apart.

I began to panic. I began to imagine the extraordinary complications of any baby - much less a heart baby - born at 29 weeks.

So I called the doctor. Who agreed it was alarming. She told me to give it another hour of rest and called the hospital to let them know I might be coming it, just in case.

The scramble to find a friend to watch the boo, who was being his cheerful, funny self throughout the panic I was trying so hard to hide, began, and fortunately, we managed to find someone to come over.

And the hour passed. And, thankfully, the contractions began to ease. Became less regular and farther apart. Less intense. Hospital visit cancelled.

Get some rest, the doctor warned. You don't want to end up on bed rest.

No, I certainly don't.

I am now doing my best to take it easy. Not my strong suit, to say the least. Utterly incompatible with my lifestyle, if you want to know the truth. But I am dutifully taking cabs instead of walking or metro-ing. I am limiting the number of Hill meetings I'll do in a day. I am forgoing spontaneous trips to the grocery store and limiting my training appointments at the gym.

It's all very annoying.

But I'm sure this will not be the last time the bean will teach me the meaning of patience.