Went to L&D last night

I have been having contractions off and on for quite a while now but more since last Friday. Yesterday I was having some but nothing more than usual. About 6pm lsat night I started having some more. I didn't think much of it at first but I noticed around 6:30 that I seemed to be having more than normal so I decided to start timing them. They were about 10 minutes apart. I watched and timed them for about 2 hours and they were still 8-10 minutes apart. I took my Nifedipine early, at 8pm instead of 9pm to see if that would stop them. They continued to be 8-10 minutes apart for about another hour and were starting to get more painful. So I called the on-call dr. and she didn't think I was probably in active labor but to come in and get checked just in case. So off to L&D we went. It was about 10pm when I got there and they hooked me up to the monitor. I was registering contactions every 7-8 minutes. They checked my cervix and despite 4 hours straight of contractions there was no change!!! The dr. thinks I am in early labor but said that this can last for days or even up to a week before it becomes "active". Now they almost kept me over night because when they first hooked me up to the monitor, the baby's heartrate was running really high (in the 170's and 180's) so they were a little concerned about that. However he was very active at that time and after a couple of hours as he became less active, his heartrate returned to a normal level. So about 12:30am, they let me come home. I am still having contractions and probably will continue to have them. I am still scheduled to go back on Friday unless my water breaks or if the contractions become less than 5 minutes apart. I felt kind of silly afterwards that i seemed to be at the hospital for no reason but I remembered that a lot of people end up there at least once before they actually give birth.