A Day In The Life With My Irritated Ute

Let's talk about it, shall we? I know you want to hear all about it, so I thought I would share. The official term for it is an irritable uterus, although my doctor called it a hyper uterus. I'm not really sure which mental image I prefer. One conjures up the image of a brownish-red blob with angry eyebrows and a mean face and the other makes me picture the same blob with arms and legs bouncing around with this crazy grin on its face. Either way, both images are somewhat disturbing.

So what is this Irritable Uterus thing anyway? Good freaking question. For the most part no one really knows. It's not quite Braxton Hicks, but it's also not quite pre-term labor contractions. That really clears it up doesn't it? An excerpt from www.iritable-uterus.com (yes that's a real website!):

Irritable Uterus, in and of itself, may not cause a woman to deliver a premature baby. We, however, believe that an irritable uterus can and often DOES, in some mysterious way, trigger a woman’s uterus to start preterm labor, which can cause preterm birth.

Clearer? No? Yeah, me neither. All I know is I have contractions all day. Some are painful some aren't. Some last only a few seconds, some last more than a minute. When they are painful, I feel cramping first then slowly my stomach begins to harden. Sometimes it hardens starting at the bottom and moving up to the top and sometimes it starts at the top and moves down. They happen when I'm up and moving, when I'm sitting and when I'm lying down. They happen when I have to pee and when I don't and they happen when I'm hungry and when I'm not. Long story short. No rhyme or reason, just contractions galore. One thing's for sure, my uterus is very irritated, in fact I think it's down right angry. The question is, who/what made it so angry? I don't know, but you better be careful around me, because you might make it more angry.

Just to give you an idea, here's a day in the form of contraction counts from yesterday. Enjoy!

(woke up at 9:30- woo!)

9:59 am
10:06

(got distracted, stopped timing)

11:33
11:39
12:06 pm
12:11

(visitors)

1:55
2:08
2:16
2:28
2:43
2:50
3:05

(break)

4:36
4:43
4:57

(dinner)

7:37
8:01
8:11
8:20
8:27
8:33
8:46
8:52
8:56
9:05

At that point I was mentally and physically exhausted so I stopped timing them. Today has been better, only three contractions in the last 2 hours. I'm expecting they'll pick up later. We shall see what the doctor says tomorrow. Hopefully they are still just a product of my irritate ute and not actual pre-term labor!