How frequent were your contractions?

[UnderHisEyeBall]

One of the things that really shocked me about my birth was how frequent my contractions were before I went into 'established labour'.

I had a two day posterior labour in which I had 5 in 10 contractions for 12 hours before I finally got induced and got an epidural in. I did not dilate and was 1.5cm when the anaesthetist turned up to do my epidural 24 hours after contractions first started.

I have spoken to other women who were 3 in 10 when they were 7cm dilated and some stayed that way until transition. Was my experience common or abnormal?

I had the same, every 2 minutes right from the start. I kept being sent home and it took 17 hours of that to get to 4cm. At that point they realised DC was in distress and I had an emergency section. I'm not sure if our experience was 'normal', I've always wondered if the frequency of the contractions right from the start was what stressed my baby out.

I had a really long latent labour with very frequent contractions. I’d had had 4 or 5 sweeps and I was told later that this had irritated my uterus. This produced frequent, very painful but totally useless contractions and completely exhausted me.

2nd baby I didn’t realise I was in proper labour until about 1.5 hours before I gave birth. The real contractions weren’t half as bad to deal with as the false ones! Fortunately the midwife popped round, examined me and I was 8cms. One very quick and relatively easy unplanned home birth!

I was induced and the whole thing went from Weds-Sat I was getting all the pains but my cervix just wasn't opening. Thankfully on the Friday I really got going. Can't remember exactly how long between contractions though

@shreddednips that's really interesting, as despite ME being pretty 'distressed' by the whole thing DS was happy as Larry the whole time they had the monitor on me and was ultimately fine.

Mine were just over two mins apart from the first contraction. I was examined two hours later and was 5cm, then within 90 mins fully dilated. Contractions were intense and close the whole time

No idea really. I was induced and soon as my waters broke I feel like I had constant contractions for an hour before I started pushing. I found it really hard to catch a break inbetween. It all happened so quickly.

I had the exact opposite.

Intense, long lasting contractions which lasted the full 60 seconds but only every 20 minutes.

This meant I didn’t think I was close (and even called in and they said this stage could last 2/3 days )

Result: baby born at home!