I don't think that was very nice

The last week or so has been a little dramatic on the baby front. Last week, I had my first trip to the hospital after my routine OB visit revealed that all of the Braxton-Hicks I've been having had led me to be about 50% effaced. JMT and I went up to the fanciest of the hospitals here in town--it just opened last month--and I had a fetal fibronectin test, a non-stress test, and an ultrasound. All three showed that I'm not progressing into "real" labor yet, but in the mean time I'm taking it very easy and taking procardia to limit the impact of my contractions.

Last week also marked the first of our birthing classes at the public hospital near our house. The first week was fine. We practiced relaxation exercises and JMT fell asleep. Last night we had our second class, which led me to the title of this post. After we watched a video on relaxation techniques, we spent a half hour with the mamas doing relaxation exercises while our partners gave us shoulder and neck massages. It was heaven! Then the nurse who runs the class had all the partners go get bags of ice. I figured we were all goign to practice sucking on ice chips or placing the ice bags in the various places demonstrated in the video.

No.

The masochistic nurse lady had the mamas simulate contractions by immersing our hands in the bags of ice for 60-90 seconds so we could "practice our relaxation techniques in a stressful situation." It was torture! I swear my hand is still tender this morning. All told, we did about 10 "contractions" that way. I don't think this was very nice. At all. I had been stress-free for the first time in days in my blissful, massaged, happy place after the first 30 minutes of the exercises, and then I Had My Hand Submerged In A Bag Of Freezing Cold Ice. No. Not very nice at all.

The upside of the whole ice experiment is that JMT got a good chuckle. He's been having one of those super stressed-out weeks where he could work 100 hours a week and still not be done, worries about me having the kid early, and a variety of house projects that aren't finished. Watching me squirm and curse over the ice business drew him out of that for a little while. Now he's on a plane to DC for the rest of the week, and I'm going to try to finagle it so that some of his house worries are taken care of when he gets home.