Enlighten Me...Tell me about the onset of labor? - Page 2

[MamaSong]

My water broke with a big gush when I stood up from sitting at my kitchen table - it was a complete shock! I thought "did I just pee my pants?"
I pulled my pants down and just let the water flow onto the floor while dh and I just laughed in disbelief. Contractions started about 2.5 hours later and grew steadily in intensity and ds was born not quite 12 hours after my water broke. I remember my mw telling me to just get some sleep because even though my water broke I might not go into actual labor for a couple days - but I KNEW it was going to be that night - I just knew! Looking back on the day I was pretty emotional - both high and low - lots of laughing and crying. I also felt "weird" that afternoon and took almost a three hour nap before my water broke. Its only in hindsight that I see something was different about that day though.

[DoomaYula]

With my twin boys, I was getting cervidil -- which was not supposed to start labor, just ripen my cervix. I was in the hospital, having a baby shower with all my friends. After a while, I said, "Wow, these cramps are really starting to get uncomfortable!" and I just wanted everyone to leave. I called my doula. The "cramps" just started getting stronger and stronger, and I just knew.

With my girl, my water broke while I was taking a nap. Nothing happened after that, so after about 8 hours I got on the breast pump. I went from no ctx to really really strong ctx in about an hour.

[luckymamato2]

I was awoken by contractions at 430am. Mine was more of the bricks variety - 12 hours long from start to finish. It wasn't unbearable, but I pretty much knew I was in labor. Abdominal/back cramping coming every 10-15 minutes or so. I didn't notice any bloody show until I was checked for the first time (and was 5cm).

[pookel]

I noticed in the afternoon that I was having a lot of BH contrax. I was getting enough that I started timing them. They were exactly 4 minutes apart. They didn't really hurt, just the normal BH. I stayed at work. They kept coming exactly 4 minutes apart. By late evening, they were fairly painful. I went home early from work. By around midnight, I was curled up in a ball just thinking about how much it hurt. Around 2 a.m., I called the hospital and was told if I couldn't walk or talk through a contraction, I should come in. I couldn't, so I did.

They checked me when I got there and I was at 0. I walked around, sat in the hot tub for a while, felt progressively worse. By around 6 a.m. I knew I wanted an epidural, the pain was so bad. Sometime after that I puked and my water broke. They wouldn't put the epidural in until I was past 4, which was around 10 a.m.

Throughout all this time the contractions remained exactly 4 minutes apart and just got more and more painful. It was weird, I'd never read of labor starting that way before.

[Tulafina]

I woke to a contrax at 430am. I went to sleep right after and woke to another 435am. I knew I was in labor. I was 10 days over my due date and really hoping that this was it. I had contrax every 5 mins for 1.5hrs, then they came every 4 mins and by the time 9am hit it was every 2-3 mins. I arrived at the hospital around 11am, I was 8cm, started pushing at 12pm and he was born at 12:28pm. Definately fast and furious. I had BH through my last 3 weeks of pregnancy that were coming at regular intervals but it was just my body gearing up. When that first contrax hit, it felt totally different than any other cramping I'd had.

[kaspar]

i had a stretch'n'sweep in the morning, at which point i was barely a centimetre, and the mw warned me i'd be crampy that aftyernoon as a resuilt. so when i was crampy - like mild period cramps - startring around 5 o'clock, i didn't think mmuch of it. but the cramps seemed regular, so i starterd timing them, and they were just under a minute long, and 5 or 6 minutes apart. but they didn;t feel intense enough to be labour, so i started looking things up in books and online - how to tell if it's real or false labour. on the positive side - cramps kept oming iunstead of stopping when i changed position/activity (and my reaction to the idea of possib;e labour was "i'd better clean the house"). on the negative side: they didn't "wrap around from the back" as described in the books. i finally thought "maybe this is something" around 2 am and called the midwife; i was 2 cm dilated at that point, and she said i was just starting early labour, and recommended i hop in the bath, and call her if something happened - she didn't expect to hear from me till the next day though, as not a lot was happening.

long story short - my babe came into the world eight hours later - 24 hours to the minute almost from the stretch'n'sweep! i expected labour to be way more intense than it was.