Well My question is : how was it for you when labor started ? I mean , the contractions , when did they start and how would you describe them ... and all that goes with labor !

I'm getting very curious simply because I am 2 days overdue ... not a lot but just enough so those false labor contractions are realy getting on my nerves :P

This is my story of the last few weeks :

I've been having false labor ( they realy are contractions and not BH so this is how they told me it's called at the hospital ) for well over a week now , I went to the hospital twise thinking it has started ... but I ran out of luck lol . They monitored them and it was really weird . For the first 30 minutes of monitoring they were 5-6 minutes appart and some were more intense then others , without any pattern . The second 30 minutes of monitoring they were 2-3 minutes appart and all stronger then any other I've had . The the last time they monitored them .... they were just gone ... I had 2-3 small ones . And the contractions for me havent realy hurt .... they are just very unconfortable as they get more intense because what I mainly feel is a feeling of tighting in my stomach. At the moment I'm still having them ... Im not timing on anything but they are nothing different from what I've already experienced and since they are supposed to *hurt* I doubt this means anything .

At the moment I am 2 cm dialated ... 95 % effaced and I got my membranes stripped a billion times LOL ( a lot when I was at the hospital and what not because for the past 2 weeks Iive had the worst lasting back pain and they wanted to see if it would help kick start labor without realy inducing it ... they kept me for 2 days , monitoring here and there and giving me harder drugs since they could monitor the babies heart ... the back pains eventualy went away and they gave me the right to go home since I was tired of just being there and I didnt want to get induced if the pain wasn't making me crazy )

wow , I have a lot to say Lol ... Oh well all of this to have you guys opinion on how things are going for me and if someone had a similar experience towards the end of their pregnancy . It's obviously my first one ... otherwise I figure I wouldnt be so clueless about labor hehe .

can't wait to hear from you guys ~!~

Hi, I had my first baby just over 3 months ago and I remember everything oh so clearly still.

I have to say from what I have heard everyone seems to labour differently.

It was about a week before my due date when I started experiencing period like cramping, it was EXACTLY like period pain. This started at about 4am in the morning so I sat in the loungeroom for a while, it wasn't painful at all. Then about 6am my waters broke but the period like pain stayed constant until about 7pm that night when they started becoming more intense, but I still wouldn't say they were painful at that stage. They were about 3 minutes apart from 9pm, sometimes 2 minutes apart. At about midnight I was in pain and vomiting so we drove to hospital. The stupid nurse on duty took one look at me and sent me home because she didn't think I was in pain enough!! So as soon as we arrive home (1 hr round trip) we had to go back to hospital again because by that time I was in agony. Anyway to cut a long story short they gave me pethadine at about 3am so I could sleep for about 1/2 hr and then I laboured through without anymore drugs until 8.30am the next day when I pushed my son out in one push (actually I wasn't really pushing, my body did it automatically). All up I was in labour for about 26 hours (but only 8hrs of that was when I was in real pain).

The only time I was examined was about 20 minutes before my son was born and the midwife could feel his head. I was surprised they didn't examine me sooner than that.

Labour does hurt but once you give birth all the pain disappears AND it's all worth it. It's really not that bad because otherwise women wouldn't be having more than one baby. Look at me I am already pregnant with my second (there will be 10 months difference between my two children).
Good luck with everything.

thank you =)
and the painful drive part sounds so horrible !
For me the contractions have been comming regularly for over 3 days .... but only causing major discomfort and today when I woke up (actualy the reason why I woke up lol ) These uncomfortable contractions because much more painful then anything else ( pulsing in my back with the mentrual pain type thing in front plus de tightning ) but they are still about 7 minutes appart ... so right now Im only waiting for them to either get closer together or go away .
I lost the mucous plug with the streak of blood in it for the 2nd time this morning too ! And they say it's a good pointer that labor as either started or is about to start .... I got quite exited last time I lost it ... but this time I'll jsut bare with the pain and wait as long as I can !!!

It's weird that they didnt examine you sooner . I already went in twice , being fooled by my pre labor contractions , but every single time they checked how effaced and dialated I was and monitored the babies heart beat and the contractions for at least half an hour . I also live only 20 minutes away ... it seems very irresponsible and even dangerous from them to just look at you and decide that your not even worth taking a look at and send youback home , specialy when you live this far way !

It sounds like you aren't very far away from having your baby now (if you haven't already had him/her), because I lost my mucous plug just after my waters broke at about 6.30am in the morning and had my son the next morning.

One thing that I have learnt from giving birth is to voice my opinion more clearly. For example I should have told the midwives/nurses to 'shove it' when they told me to go home lol! This was the Gold Coast Hospital. My partner and I have already made an official complaint to them because there were many things that we were disappointed with eg, my birth plan not being adhered to (actually I don't think it was even read), the loud noise we had to put up with, no help with lactation meaning my baby wasn't fed for 24 hrs!! I wasn't to know since this is my first and it's all a big learning process. Anyway we have had a meeting with the head of staff at the hospital since and they have taken our complain seriously so that they have taken action to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Good luck with everything.