Several hours of fairly regular, very painful contractions last night, complete with some physical evidence that things are progressing, though not enough to actually go to the hospital. I spent each contraction lying on my side clapping my hands (sometimes I tried to do a 7/4 beat to distract myself, but mostly it was just soft golf-clapping) or going "la la la la!" or making interesting moany noises. All of that helped distract me from the fucking pain. What didn't help? Going "This fucking HURTS!" Just saying that honestly made the pain worse. Huh.

They weren't as bad when Tim was there (for awhile he was in the living room; I called the corless phone on the cell phone to summon him after I didn't want to be alone anymore), but they still sucked.

Then, around 5 AM, they didn't stop, but they stopped being so fucking painful I couldn't sleep through them.

Today, I have a mix of painful and horribly fucking painful, approximately 10 min apart. I am exhausted from last night. I am nauseated. I am making myself eat anyway, and soon I will let my doula know my progress and try to go back to sleep for awhile.

I think it *might* be soon now, but I dunno. We'll see. I am now officially in the stage affectionately known as the "get it out! get it out!" stage.