Labor & Delivery: False Labor Part II

So my contractions finally became more consistent for a significant period of time. They were 2-5 minutes apart for almost two hours. Before they were often but would bounce back and forth or taper off and were never consistent for more than an hour.
I called my OB's office and the nurse advised that I go to Labor & Delivery at the hospital. I really was hoping to get to go in to the office and get checked there instead. I had a feeling I'd get sent home even though things were different this time.
Ben came and picked me up and we got to L&D around 4:30pm. Contractions had been consistent since about 2pm and were staying that way whether I was sitting or standing and some were more painful than what I had experienced before so I was pretty hopeful that this was finally it...
I got hooked up to the monitors in the triage room and when the nurse checked my cervix I was between 3 and 4cm. Since I was at that point at my last OB appointment on Monday the on-call doctor for my group suggested having me walk and see if I would progress further and was actually in active labor. Ben and I were hungry so I walked briskly in circles around the L&D hallways while he grabbed us bagels from the cafeteria.
We walked for an hour and a half and the contractions got really intense. Back to the monitors and another check, I was at a 4 at that point but the doctor didn't feel like that was significant enough progress to admit me and I was sent home. While it was quite discouraging, he was right.
I came home and rested as much as I could. I finally fell asleep and woke up with no contractions at all.
This is so maddening.
As I write this I'm having my nightly contractions...I'm not even bothering timing them anymore. I told Ben that the only way I'm going back to the hospital is if my water breaks or if the contractions are so strong I need help getting to the car. I'm fairly serious about this, I'm so irritated and we surely don't have the money for all these trips.
This has been the most surprising thing about pregnancy, I thought I would know if/when I'm in labor.
The upside is that once active labor finally happens I don't have far to go to get to 10cm and baby is very low and ready to be born!
Also- my wonderful husband is now home for the month. His job ended but he's paid through the end of the month through sick leave and his severance agreement. I love having him around...and today he organized and cleaned the garage. I feel like Oprah's clean sweep crew just came through!! He's so awesome :)
And tomorrow we're going to go swimming, I'm no longer stuck in the house waiting for labor. There's only so much nesting one can do in a 900 square foot house!