If youve had more than 1 birth, and at least 1 pregnancy had prodromal labor

[Mama_2_Boy]

This is my second pregnancy after almost 5 years. Friday is my due date. I have had alot of prodromal labor going on for the last month. On two seperate occassions I thought for sure it was the real deal. I had no prodromal labor or even BH for that matter with my first and my first labor last 15 hrs with 2 hrs of pushing. I'm curious to know if the prodromal labor has any effect on the 'real' labor. Somewhere I think I read that it makes it longer? Or maybe it just feels like that because you've had so much prodromal that you can hardly tell when the real labor starts??

Thanks.

[Belle]

With both my daughters I had around two weeks of start and go labor. I'd have contractions 5 minutes apart for a couple hours and then they would abruptly stop.

When I went into actual labor It was like "BOOM" You're in labor. 2 minute contractions from start to finish. There was never any change in intensity of the contractions. They started out strong. First labor was 11 hours total. 2nd labor was less than four hours. I think it actually made real labor easier.

[JamieCatheryn]

You'd think the strong BH near the end would get something done ahead of time, but not for me. I had them all through pregnancy especially at the end of both and had looonnngg labors: the early, easy-ish stage from 1-4cm lasted 24 consecutive hours the first time and 20h the second, with another like 14h of active labor with DS1 and 9h active with DS2.

[Hey Mama!]

I went through prodromal labor with my second and third. It helped with my 2nd, it got me to 4cm before I was in active labor. Total real labor was 2.5 hours. With my 3rd dd my real labor was around 10 hours. The only difference I can think of that would have made such a difference is that 2nd dd was head down early on and stayed there, and 3rd dd was transverse til very late in the pregnancy.

[Juniperberry]

I had about 2-3 weeks of prodromal labor with DS2 which really hotted up in the last week to very painful. By the time real labor actually set in I didn't realise it because I thought it was more prodromal labor lol. But looking back, my active labor to birth lasted 8.5 hours.

DS1 was 10 days late and was induced - never to be repeated!!! So I have no clue how that labor would have been, but there wasn't much prodromal labor.

good luck!!

[Harmony96]

I'm not really sure if I had prodormal labor or not, lol. I definitely did not w/ DD. I had BH here and there, but they were always just a completely painless tightening. Then when labor started w/ my outer bag of waters breaking (inner and larger bag didn't break until transition), my contractions started almost immediately and she was in my arms 12 hours later.

Then with DS, I also had BH contractions. Then every so often, I had a "BH" contraction that was painful, and that increased in intensity to a peak and then died down again. Compared to the other BH contractions, those felt real. But I rationally knew that they weren't REALLY real. I would only have like one a day or so. Then the day before he was born, I started having real contractions all day long, but 30-60 minutes apart. They didn't feel all that drastically different from the "peaky" BH contractions, but there was some little nuance about them that I can't even put my finger on that made me realize "hey, these are REALLY REAL contractions." At about 6:00 pm, they finally picked up in frequency to 7-9 minutes apart, and DS was born just after 2:00 in the morning, 8 hours later. I "count" his labor as being 8 hours long, lol.

[Veritaserum]

I've had 5 babies and 5 prodromal labors. My body apparently likes the long warm-up. With my first it was really difficult because I kept being told it was "false labor". With my second and subsequent babies, I used affirmations to stay positive (and sane).