To labor, or not to labor, that is the question!

Trying to figure out if you are in labor or not isn't as easy as I thought it would be.

I'm 39 weeks pregnant and have already had two incidents where I thought I might be in labor and it turned out I wasn't. Two nights ago I thought I was in labor because I was having a ton of contractions that did not go away when I got up to walk around. They didn't really hurt, but they were a bit uncomfortable. They went on for hours - starting at 7:30pm and continued until I finally went to sleep at about 1am. As time passed they got closer together, but they were never particularly regular. By the time I went to sleep they could be anywhere between 5 minutes apart to 20. So what did I do? I combed the internet, of course. People online said they had labors where their contractions barely hurt, or whose contractions were never all that regular. It was really the fact that I was having them so often and for such a long period of time that made me think that I might be in labor. Feeling exhausted, I decided to get some rest - if I was truly in labor I'd wake up and know if, and if I wasn't, well, there was no point in staying up. Needless to say, I woke up the next day and was no longer having contractions. Slightly confused, I trolled the internet and came across this article about Prodromal Labor (something I had never heard of before) that summed up exactly what I was going through the night before. Now, I've read 3 (and a half) books about pregnancy, so it is not like I am completely uninformed - and yet I still had never heard of this! AH!

But like I said, I've had two incidents where I wasn't sure if I was in labor or not. The second time was today. I was standing in my bathroom getting ready to shower when all of a sudden liquid started coming out of my crotch-area. I was shocked! It wasn't a ton of liquid, but enough to go through my underwear and pajama pants. Since it wasn't all that much, I wasn't sure if it was my water breaking or not. Had I just lost complete control of my bladder or was I going into labor? I called my Dr and she had me go into the hospital where they checked me out - and lucky me, it seems that the baby just pressed on my bladder and I peed myself. Awesome. As if the hemorrhoids, diarrhea, constipation vomiting everywhere, and excessive farting were not gross enough, I can now add "pissing myself" to the list of awesome things my body has done during the past nine months.

I wish I would either go into labor now or know exactly when I would go into labor. The not knowing and the waiting are driving me crazy.