After a long day

Friday was another regularly busy day at work.... For dinner, Pat and I went to visit Jen and her boyfriend for dinner at his apartment near LAX. The food was great, the company was good, and we came home exhausted from the week. After crawling into bed, Pat fell asleep right away. I was up reading London Bridges by James Patterson when I felt a thud in my body around 12:30am. I immediately felt like going to the bathroom. There I saw this whitish substance coming out. I was pretty calm about it and thought that maybe it was my mucus plug coming out. After all, I was suppose to have 3 more weeks of pregnancy.
The pain during the first 3 hours was extremely bareable. It was so light that I didn't wake up Patrick. I thought that maybe they would go away. Even if it was the actually labor pains, I wanted him to get some sleep before we have to go through it.
At 3am, I woke him up because my back was killing me. The pain came about every 5 minutes by then, and they we mostly in my back. Pat tried to help me ease the pain by forcefully rolling 2 tennis size balls on my back.
At 5:30am, the pain was still persistant. I figured out by this time that they are contractions. Pat finally called the doctor, who told us to go to the hospital, just in case....