Contractions....??

Our due date was Friday, October 14th and we were anxiously awaiting the baby's arrival.  On Sunday morning we got up and got ourselves ready for church, like a typical Sunday.  But today was different...I was experiencing some pains in my lower area and my rectum...they would happen every so often....but no way did I think they were contractions.  Everyone had told me that the contractions will start at the top of my belly because everything would tighten as the baby would push its way down. When I told Keith about the pains he was concerned and thought we should stay home, I said no I wanted to go to church.  The pains came every so often at church but that didn't stop us from going to lunch.  We stopped home and picked up my sister-in-law Marybeth, and we all (Keith, Joyce, MB and I) headed to Cracker Barrel for lunch.  During lunch the pains came again...and they did a couple of times more, and Marybeth had timed them and said "um honey....those were 12 minutes apart.  Those are contractions and you're in labor".  I started to get REALLY nervous but before I could worry too much I still had some things to finish up...so we went to Bath and Body and Target to grab last minute items, all while I was still having......the pains!  After we left Target Keith thought it was best that we went home to relax for the rest of the day.  The pains stayed with me all day and obviously grew stroger.  We layed in the chairs and tried to relax as best we could (ya right!) and Keith timed the contractions as they came.  I kept the paper that he was writing them down on, and it's hilarious!  As the early morning hours came his handwriting waived some and at one point you can tell he was falling back to sleep because the numbers were falling down the paper.  We used the breathing technques we learned at our birthing class and even layed in the chairs to sleep with quiet music playing on the tv.  The rest of the night we were monitoring the "pains" and at one point they seemed to spread out instead of closer, so I assumed it was false labor.  When I told Keith it's probably false labor he was very sure in his answer of "no, it's not"!  We decided to go and lay in bed around 2am and we did manage to fall asleep.  I woke a few minutes to 6 with some of the pains again...and decided to get up to use the restroom...when I did MY WATER BROKE!!  I was so excited because I really wanted to experience everything about labor and I knew this was the start of it!  Keith  on the other hand became instantly nervous (for the entire 9 months Keith kept telling me he was NOT nervous about anything...and I would always say I was scared to death).  We had loaded our bags and things into the truck earlier in the evening so Keith was finishing some last minute details and I headed into the bathroom to make sure my make-up and hair looked ok....(you know the important things!)  We left a few minutes later and headed to St. Charles to begin the day we had waited so long for!!