Last night I had my first real "prelabor" pain. It's also commonly referred to as "false labor", but it felt like the truth to me. I didn't feel well yesterday because I didn't sleep well and was experiencing so much pressure that it was nearly impossible to get comfortable. I constantly felt (still do) like I'm sitting on the baby's head. Finally, I pulled out the exercise ball and sat on that which did amazing things for feeling comfortable again. I drank my daily cup of raspberry leaf tea and tried to get my mind off of how I was feeling by reading up on some ladies that just had their babies that were due within a day of my due date.
Then it started happening. At first, I thought it was very unusual because I don't normally feel the "belt-tightening" sensation of Braxton-Hicks contractions that I've heard other women refer to. I just ignored it even though it kept happening every few minutes. Then the pain started low in the front and then embraced my entire abdomen with a hard squeezing sensation. There was a definite, beginning, peak, relaxing sensation. I was home alone and both my doula and my husband weren't readily available. I knew that there's typically days of prelabor before the real thing starts, but the advice from the hospital is to time them and if you have one contraction that lasts one full minute and re-occurs every five minutes for an hour, then it's time to call labor and delivery. I found this website (jeez I'm such geek) that times contractions called contraction master. I started timing them and the pattern was regular at 1 minute long contractions every 4 minutes. After 40 minutes of this pattern, I got a little excited, but knew intuitively that it wasn't time yet.
I went for a walk to get away from timing them to see if they would increase in strength as real contractions are supposed to. I walked around the neighborhood for about 30 minutes with Squee stopping to mark every tree, bush, or blade of grass he possibly could which irritated the crap out of me. (Note to self: Leave Squee at home when in labor) The contractions did at times get more intense to the point that I had to stop and breath through them, but not consistently. When I finally decided to go home, they subsided and left me with a subtle backache that I still have at this very moment.
In total I spent about 2 hours in prelabor. I got to practice dealing with the sensations of it. I have to admit it hurt a bit more than I was expecting at times, but my body is built to cope with it. Bring on the big day! Anyone gonna take bets now whether it'll be in the next week?
