Am I in labour?

[slithytove]

Third baby, 40+5, trying for a home vbac

Previous stillbirth and sections so this is my first 'normal' gestation and labour.

I had a sweep on Sunday and been losing bits of mucus plug ever since, no bloody show though.

I've been getting irregular contractions since midnight, sometimes 1 every 10 mins, sometimes 1 a minute. They take my breath away and I feel like I need to poo with each one. Also have a fair bit of back pain but this is pretty normal for me.

I am constipated and have terrible wind

Could this be labour? Should I take any paracetemol or Fybogel or anything? If I'm going to have a baby tm I'd really like to get some sleep and at the moment contractions are preventing that.

Tough if he's tired because of something he chose to do

I said this exact thing this morning. DS was asleep by 7 last night, and I was fine with DH spending as much time as he wanted in his game. But do not bitch about being tired when he wanted to stay up late. He also told me off because he is "fed up of being woken up quickly" I.e. with the baby crying. God he makes me see red.

It's frustrating hearing him whine about how tired he is, after I've sat up feeding from 4-6.30, at which point DS wakes up. DH is still in bed now. He seems to think because this is his holiday he can just drink and play games and do what he wants. Admittedly he was very very good during the day yesterday but it can't just be a one off. And why is it that dads are 'good' but mums are just doing what they have to do?

As if that weren't annoying enough, his family arrive today and I just don't feel equipped to cope with it. When DS was born DH sat up getting hammered with them till 4am which kept me and DS up, it was just awful. I hope to god he has more sense this time.

Luckily we have had a decent enough morning. I got out my hot water bottle for my tummy, it has a furry cover, and DS is just fascinated by it. That and frozen has kept him quite happy snuggled up on the couch with me. Lucky for DH.

After what we were talking about here yesterday with SIDS etc, I am certainly going to rip him a new one. He knows the risks, I mean I won't even have him in our bed if he has had more than a couple of drinks, and I certainly don't have Livvy between us. She is by me and the edge of the bed blocked in with the crib. So he knows full well it was totally irresponsible and I will make him feel lile utter shit for risking it.

I feel like I just don't know how to get through to DH sometimes. He has had 'issues' with booze in the past, to the extent he said he was quitting. He did for about a month, and yet for the last 3 nights he has drunk. Only beer, and only 4/5, but still way too much for my liking. I don't think it's fair he automatically makes me the solo responsible parent at night without even asking if I'm ok with it. And as I said, I'm dreading what might happen when his family are here. I know full well if I ask him to stop drinking he will get all huffy and offended as he has in the past. And he certainly wouldn't stop with his parents here. Arrrgh I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall.

Im going to try Fybogel today, I have a huge box left over from DS birth so hopefully it will work quick.

'fed up of being woken quickly/by crying' yeah cos us wimmin just fucking love it!

I have similar frustrations with dh in that he cannot seem to wake up/get up quickly regardless of the emergency. it drives me wild. Something will happen like ds will smash a jar of jam all over the floor or the pipes under the sink will have burst and water is pissing everywhere, dh will be napping and i run in and say quick come and help, he will say 'er umm yeah, gie me a minute' so i rush off to try and deal with it thinking he will be out in a second. Miutes later he still isn't out so i go in and he's turned the light off and gone back to sleep. I say wtf are you doing and he says 'don't rush me' or 'i can't help falling back asleep' (of course you can, you just don't shut your eyes and lay back down!). there is water/jam/glass everywhere, ds is screaming and attacking me because hewants to run in it and dh fancies a leisurely wake up?

If he even says my name i levitate off the bed and am ready to run around. i think it is really self indulgent to insist you can't when something major happens (this is a man who has been sent to war zones and been on call in emergency situations so it's totally selective), he just thinks, oh koala can handle it and if she can't she can come back in and get me

Anyway, rant over, your dh really needs to be told to sort it out. he's acting like a student ffs. He has 2 children to look after now, his priorities are fucked. How old is he btw?

OMG, Slithy, really really ram home to him the dangers of what he's done.

And FGS get him up, the lazy toad! Send Ds in to him, that's a surefire way to get him woken up, I find.

DH at least had the decency to come off the booze entirely for 21m after his drunken escapade (although I suspect that at least part of that was his humiliation at work, as he'd been sick on the bus and fallen into the gutter getting off it - 2 of his colleagues had to support him back to our front door!)

DH never ever did any of the night stuff though, not with either of them. As I was co-sleeping, and he "needed his sleep because he was working" (ok then, cos he's just SO much more important than me ) I did it all but got my "evening out" by making him cook dinner every evening.

And yes, mine's the same with emergencies - they're never important enough for him to move himself!

Fuck huffy and offended Slithy - get him told. His drinking and therefore his falling asleep with a newborn baby put his/your daughter in danger. There's no getting out of that and there's simply no excuse for it.

Okay so he can have the odd lie in, he's off work, why not, so long as YOU can also catch up on Zzz's too. I wouldn't leave him laying in bed though if he'd been drinking and staying up late playing his game - self infliction doesn't deserve respect.
Remember what I said ^ about his new Fifa disc?

Fybogel should get things going but if you're desperate for immediate relief send someone to boots/superdrug/asda pharmacy for glycerin suppositories - pop one inside, wait as long as you possibly can then...... immediate relief.