At what point did you realize you were in labor? Had you been having cramps/contractions and then realized because they became consistent/stronger? Did your water break? What moment made you say, oh, this is the real thing? And how long had you been experiencing what you now know are signs, before you realized?
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About 3 hours into a less than 6 hour labor I knew I was either in labor or something was seriously wrong. I'd been having contractions but they weren't anything like I'd been prepared for (rolling contractions that were back to back with little to no break). I don't think there was a moment that made me think that it actually was labor, more of a feeling that if it was or it wasn't, I needed to be at the hospital either way.
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My water broke in bed and the contractions were totally different than before!
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I didn't have any signs . . . I had an unplanned induction! So I will have no advantage of prior knowledge if we try for a second. : /
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I went into labor at night and woke up from contractions. Since they were painful enough that I couldn't sleep through them, I figured they were the real deal. They were! (I didn't really have painful BH contractions, so the fact that they were painful at all made me think they were real.)
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I had never felt a single contraction before real labor started. And my first two were only four minutes apart!! After about an hour of that I knew it was baby time (I started having bloody show too). After another hour we headed to the hospital.
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My water broke, but I still wasn't really sure. I had to call my OB and say, "sooo this happened...does that mean I'm in labor?"
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It started as menstrual like cramps, then I realized they were coming and going... after an hour of those they started to get stronger and I realized I could time them! It started off very subtly, no water breaking or anything it just started out dull and got more & more intense!
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I woke up at 4 am and had to go #2 then I started feeling cramps. About an hour later when I noticed they had a rhythm, I knew I was in labor.
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@hellobeeboston: that's like how mine started. It felt like menstrual cramps then just kept getting stronger and stronger
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I had regular cramps all night that I thought were contractions. Friends told me - you'll know when they're contractions. When I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, my water broke on the toilet. I still wasn't sure, so I laid back down and within 2 minutes, ouch...now THAT was a contraction, not a cramp. They were already 3-4 minutes apart so we headed to the hospital.
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I felt crampy all day and around 4pm, I started getting regular contractions. Those contractions told me I was in labor.
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I had been cramping all week, so I didn't think anything of the cramping the day I went into labor. That night at 10:30pm in bed, I got a major contraction. Something that hurt so much that I had to sit up and get out of bed. I thought maybe that was it, and it was confirmed a little while later when the contractions started to become more regular.
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I thought that I was having digestive issues when I got home from work aka diarrhea. I reached a point where I couldn't sit comfortably anywhere in the house. We tried a warm bath to see if the pain would go away since the contractions didn't seem organized.
After the failed warm bath, the contractions got more organized. We loaded up the car and called the on call doc that we were on our way. By the time I got to triage, I was already 4 cm and contracting every 2-3 minutes. I got admitted an hour or so later. All of this started at about 7pm. By 8-9am the next day, my LO arrived.
I truly didn't know I was in labor until the contractions got unbearable. I had some minor cramping at work, but totally ignored it. I worked a full day at work and then went into active labor at home. I didn't get caught up in the stages of labor and lucked out with a great labor and delivery.
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My water broke while in bed!
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When my midwife checked me and told me that i was in labor and to walk my butt over to the hospital. I know that doesn't help you
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Contractions were a lot more pinching and regular than they'd been. And then I lost my MP after a day of contractions (though they still say it can be quite awhile), and then a few hours later my water broke and I said OK theres no delaying this thing. After water breaking there was no more pinching with contractions, just a lot of ouuuuuchhhhh, then I was really mentally ready to have baby out.
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I woke up at 8am with painful contractions, by 9am they were 3 minutes apart. I thought I'd better get to the hospital. lol
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I had painful Braxton Hicks for weeks, but one night they were particularly painful. By the next morning I could not walk or talk through the contractions (I had to stop, bend over, and gruuuuunt). Even though my contractions were never regularly 5 mins apart, we went in to be checked and I was indeed in labor.
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I started having back pains just bad enough that I couldn't sleep through them (around 7am). It was mostly off and on back pain for several hours, so I didn't really think much of it. I sent my husband to work at 11. It took several hours to realize they were coming at regular intervals, but I didn't think I was in labor yet, because they were pretty far apart (12-15 minutes for like 12 hours), and they weren't the cramping pain I was expecting (I had back labor).
DH came home early from work because he didn't want to miss anything (his boss told me later he sent him home early because he was so antsy he was barely getting anything done). I felt bad because I still didn't think it was real labor yet. It wasn't until they started getting closer together that I thought it might be something. I went to L&D when they'd been coming 5 minutes apart for over two hours, and then got sent home because they stopped and I was only at 3cm.
When I got home I was in an almost unbearable amount of pain. I labored for 2-3 more hours at home, finally decided it still wasn't real labor (clearly I was in denial), but that I was in so much pain that I wanted to go to the hospital and ask to be induced because I couldn't bear it anymore. When the OB checked me again I was at a 5, and I actually said "You're not going to send me home again?"
So...20 hours after it started, after I had been admitted for real, and the OB told me I was going to have a baby that day was when I knew for sure.
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My water broke, like big time, unmistakable gush.
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With DD my water broke. Then I started having strong contractions and throwing up.
With DS, I was having mild contractions every two minutes for about 5 hours, so I decided it was time to go in and get checked.
I was so worried both times that I wouldn't know when I was actually in labor. Don't worry! There is no mistaking real contractions when active labor starts!
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My random cramps became regular albeit not painful. When I tried to go to sleep I felt compelled to get back up and move. I knew it was real and started timing around 1 called the Ob around 6 hospital by 8 baby arrived at 3!
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Following this !!
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When my water broke and soaked my yoga pants! Lost mucus plug about 2 hours before that.
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