The SLOW start of labor

Well, we just returned home from the hospital. It seems my water breaking may actually have only been the mucus plug. What a crazy afternoon/evening.

After waking up from a nap at 3pm, I was dribbling, then dripping fluid. The fluid was brown. I thought it looked like old blood, but I was concerned it might have been meconium - the baby's first poop. My midwife felt the same and recommended we get it checked out at the hospital.
We decided to eat lunch first, granted I was too excited/nervous to eat much. Matt proceeded to finish packing the bags in case they wouldn't let us return home. He was awesome. I mostly loitered, having periodic mild contractions.

We got on the road and to the hospital close to 6pm. From the description and the tissue sample I brought with me from home, the nurse was sure it was only my mucus plug. The brown was definitely old blood (meconium is green) and there wasn't very much. They did a non-stress test to measure the baby's heart rate - it was great. They took a cotton swab sample from my vagina to analyze it for amniotic fluid - it came back positive. Our nurse was surprised, but there are factors that could give a false positive reading and we met those. She went to get midwife approval for us to go home...

SHIFT CHANGE - man, not a fun time to be waiting at the hospital - we were there for 3 hours, mostly because of this. Our nurse had to go, the midwives on call were all changing over and the technician for the ultrasound went home.

Our nurse, Cindy, was awesome. She waited until a new midwife gave an opinion. Get an ultrasound and check fluid levels. Okay. Little did we know the tech had left and we had to wait for the on-call tech to come in. Grumble.
I measured 7.5 - yeah, I don't really know what that means either. On Wednesday, I was 9.5 and was told that was great. Tonight, there was less awesomeness with the reading. We waited now for the OB on duty to say, "go home." But, she didn't. She wanted to check me with a speculum. She wanted me to lay down for another 10 minutes to 'collect fluid' for her to check it the membrane really was ruptured or not. We had had it, however. We went in for a meconium check - that was clear. My waters, if broken, are only leaking a little, in fact I hadn't leaked any onto the pad since basically putting it on. I am not having strong or regular contractions. We decided not to wait for another test that seemed unnecessary.

We are finally home. Our parents are still in Southern California. And, we will return to the hospital to have the baby when labor become active. And, as precautions, I won't use the labor tub, will take my temperature regularly to monitor any signs of fever and on Monday morning we will see the midwife and have another ultrasound and non-stress test.