One of my friends is very close to delivery. We were talking the other night about signs of impending labor and I began to reflect on my own experience. Every woman’s story is different, but I have noticed that first babies tend to take their sweet time getting ready. I delivered on a Monday, but my contractions started on the Wednesday prior. It gets stressful when you can’t figure out whether you’re experiencing the real thing or simply false labor. After all, there’s nothing false about false labor. It still hurts, it just doesn’t lead to any progress. Unless you’ve been through childbirth before, there really isn’t a good way to tell on your own since pain is relative. If you haven’t experienced full blown contractions, you don’t have anything to compare these first contractions to.
The first time I started feeling contractions was right after spending the evening mopping my floors and scrubbing the baseboards. I’ll admit, I was doing those tasks to bring on labor. It seemed to have worked at the time, too. I started feeling contractions and pain in my lower back. It got bad enough to where I needed to stand in the hot shower to sooth the pain. I started to time them and they were consistently ten minutes apart. Unfortunately, they stopped after a couple hours.
Over the next couple days, I continued to walk laps around the house, squat in front of the TV, eat spicy foods, massage my pressure points and dance in an effort to bring on labor. Looking back, I was being silly since I was only 39 weeks, but at the time I was completely miserable. The thought of being pregnant for another week literally brought me to tears.
Saturday night, I consistently had painful contractions every 3 to 4 minutes. I got checked at the hospital and measured at about 3 to 4 centimeters. I went home to rest and wait until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Imagine my disappointment the next morning when I woke up and realized labor had stalled again. We walked around the mall and camped out in the living room Sunday night, just waiting for labor to kick in again.
By Monday morning, I was completely exhausted. I hadn’t slept very well and I was emotionally drained from the start-and-stop labor. I had a prenatal appointment scheduled for that morning so I took that opportunity to tell my doctor how much I was suffering. He took one look at my elephant ankles and told me to head over to the hospital for an induction. I was so relieved!
It’s not unusual for contractions to start and stop before full blown labor kicks in. I believe I would have not needed Pitocin if I had just waited a few more days. Labor might have been a little bit easier as a result.
If you are waiting for labor to start, take my advice and try not to rush into it. Rest as much as possible to save your energy. Watch a marathon of your favorite movies or play a board game with your family. When it gets to be too hard to focus on those things, begin to practice the relaxation techniques you learned in childbirth classes. When your contractions are exceptionally painful and you can’t take it anymore, then head to the hospital. If you go too soon, you might be disappointed to find out that you still have a long way to go. It’s a lot nicer to labor at home than in a hospital room.