Irregular contractions first labour, will second be the same?

[JellyBert]

Hi, when I was in labour with DS it was spontaneous but very long (40 hours in total) & contractions never got regular.
For the last 10 hours or so I had an epidural & was on a drip turned up max - I know that because my epidural wore off & I could feel constant contractions at 10cm it was agony. Thank god they manabed to get it working again!!
I really want to avoid an epidural next time but are irregular contractions likely to happen again? It's not something I had heard of before, just assumed I 'wasn't in labour' even though it was agony. I had to get my DP to lie to the midwifes on the phone so I could go in hospital as they kept telling me it wasn't labour.
I just want to do ANYTHING to avoid this next time round!! (Due in 14 weeks)

Hi, this sounds similar to me. I had really irregular contractions with my first that stopped altogether when I was about 5cm so they put me on the drip. Even with the drip they never got closer together than 2 in 10 minutes and it was a very long labour. Ended up with a forceps delivery. With my second baby I had the same thing, my contractions would get close together then space out again so I just stayed at home. I only went in to get checked because my waters broke but my contractions were 5 to 10 minutes apart and the midwife in triage didn't think I was in labour. I was actually 10 cm and delivered a few minutes later!! I have been told that next time I will have it in my notes that my contractions never get regular / 3 in 10 minutes and to get to the hospital earlier on in labour. So there definitely are some people who can go through labour without ever getting regular contractions but I never knew it was a thing until it happened to me! So my advice would be to tell them on the phone that you don't get regular contractions. Good luck, my second was very easy so irregular contractions don't necessarily mean a difficult birth.

I didn't have regular contractions with either labour. Mine were all over the place until the end, both the duration of each contraction and the gap between them.

My midwife told me the gap between them doesn't matter that much - if you're having three contractions every ten minutes you're in established labour.

I contracted every three minutes from start to finish with both labours for my dc, but they were entirely different.