Tell me about YOUR previous natural labors...

[Dreamer]

Soooo... as I get closer to the edd I am sort of confused as to what I should expect this labor thing to be like... I was induced last time w/ Bray so I never really felt any sort of *natural* contractions, or my water breaking naturally, yk?? It was all artificial so I'm not really sure how I will *know* when real labor hits... My mw's assistant sort of giggled and said, "You'll know!" all silly-like when I brought my concern up to them but my midwife was dead serious that what I felt w/ pitocin induced contractions was probably close to what it would feel like when I was closer to transition, that my labor would probably *START* much milder than any type of contraction I've ever felt... so I just wanted to hear about YOUR labor... how did it start? How did you know *this is it*? Details, please!!!

Alayna

[pwit]

I don't think thats a silly question at all. I decided it was real labor because for me it was the first time I was getting any type of regular contractions and it didn't matter if I was laying down they kept coming regularly. They weren't super painful though. I also had a loose bowel movement in the night a few hours before and thought that I was getting woke up in the night with contractions. By 5:30 they were just enough to keep me awake. Mostly I knew it was the real thing though because every hour things got a little more intense.

[becoming]

I was having a dream that I was walking through a parking lot, and my stomach was hurting so badly that I kept doubling over and eventually had to lay down on the seat of a stranger's pick-up truck! I woke up and was having pains that felt like bad menstrual cramps. I started timing the pains, and lo and behold, they were exactly 7 minutes apart at that point.

This was with my DD, my second pregnancy. I was induced with my first, and the "natural" labor pains felt much different than pitocin-induced ones, at least to me. I remember the pit-induced contractions as being more of a bone-on-bone grinding sort of "raw" pain, and the natural labor pains were more like an achy, crampy, gassy feeling. Hard to describe!

[bbrandonsmom]

Alayna I asked my mw the same thing, and then told her I feel like I never had a baby before. I never had any of this stuff going on with ds at all. Except early contractions, but then they stopped. I'm going to imagine that the contractions will be much better, or rather we will handle them better since they won't be pitocin ones, and coming at us full blast from the get go. So by the time transition comes maybe we can cope better? I've had some cx on and off and for me they differ from bh's by it's my whole uterus getting hard, not just the lower end. And lately they've been strong enough to make me take a slow cleansing breath if I get one. I'm wondering if my water actually breaks before labor starts. So I'm with you on what's going to happen and feeling a little silly.

[Mommyintraining2]

Great question!

:

[Jen H.]

It was fairly obvious for me, since my water broke first. Then I had almost immediate diarrhea that was painless, and a short time later I started feeling very crampy. The contractions felt like menstrual cramps that came and went with relative regularity. I just called my midwives and they said I was in labour! Sure enough, 16 hours later DS was born. But honestly, my contractions never followed a true "pattern" like they tell you to watch for. So if it hadn't been for my water breaking I might not have figured it out until I was quite far along.