Weird Day

Today is my EDD, but I ended up
spending the afternoon at the hospital yesterday because of a weird
experience. Warning: long story.

I've had an easy third tri, with no
pain or complications. Baby developping normally, everything
textbook. All of a sudden, while waiting in line at the movie theatre
yesterday, I feel something start to literally gush. First thought:
my water's breaking. I go to the bathroom and check it out, and it's
tons of bright, red blood. I call the obstetrics unit at our
hospital, and the nurse tells me to come right away. I am soaking
through every inch of large, overnight maxi pads every 20-30 minutes.
The nurse says she thinks the sheer volume of liquid is because my
water is broken, but it appears red because it's mixing with cervical
blood.

So we go off to the hospital, happy and
excited to have a baby. At the hospital they hook me up to a fetal
monitoring device, and another one that measure the frequency and
intensity of contractions. Baby is healthy and moving well. But the
other device shows that I am having intense contractions every 3-4
minutes. Weirdly... I don't feel a thing.

The nurse calls my doctor, who is
finishing up with another patient. She is so sure that I am going
into labour that she starts asking all kinds of questions about my
birth plan. I keep telling her I'm not having contractions, but she
doesn't believe me because the machine says otherwise. Finally, she
tells me that some women are more sensitive to feeling their
contractions than others, and in some extremely rare cases, women
don't feel their contactions at all until it's almost time to push.

In the meantime, the bleeding has
almost completely stopped. This is when I know I haven't lost
amniotic fluid, because it would just keep replenishing itself.

The doctor comes in, performs a
cervical exam, tests the cervical blood and tests my own blood which
the nurse drew from my arm. He also says he wants to re-examine my
last ultrasound to check for overlooked placenta problems. While
waiting for test results, I remain hooked up to the fetal monitoring
and contraction monitoring machine for 4 hours. About halfway
through, the machine shows the contractions diminishing considerably
and becoming increasingly irregular, eventually almost stopping.

Several hours later the doctor returns
with test results. The cervical blood is negative for amniotic fluid,
and there is no placenta blood mixed with mine either (good news). So
basically, all the fluid I lost was cervical blood. They don't know
why... the only hypothesis is that it could have been stimulated by
the frequent, intense contractions (though I'm only 3 cm dilated). So
they sent me home.

So apparently, I don't feel my
contractions. Now I'm worried about what will happen when I really do
go into labour! I live 30 minutes away from the hospital, but the drive can take over an hour during periods of heavy traffic. What if I don't feel anything until it's too late? 

On a related note, my mother (who lives
across the country) has been driving me crazy lately. She keeps
telling me to go to the hospital the moment I feel a twinge, because
it could be labour. She keeps reiterating that for all three of her
kids, even the first one, her labours never exceeded two hours from
start to finish. The last one she gave birth to 45 minutes after
leaving the house for the hospital. I thought for sure she was
exaggerating, and kept telling her I'd go to the hospital either when
my water broke, or when my contractions were 5 minutes apart, like
everybody else. But now I wonder if this decreased sensitivity to
contractions thing is hereditary.

Has anyone else experienced anything
like this?