Weird slow labour, anyone had similar?

[t411y]

Sorry if bits of this are TMI but it is (hopefully) a labour thread!

Currently 40+5 with my first baby. On Friday night / Saturday morning I was woken by some pains at about 1am. I’d been having these overnight for a few days so I ignored them as when I’d got out of bed before that had stopped them. By 5am I couldn’t sleep through the pain anymore and when I got up they carried on. ‘Excellent’, I thought! ‘Here we go’. Walked the dogs, pottered about and proceeded to do some gym ball exercises which got me contracting every 15-20mins for around 45secs over the next couple of hours. Also lost some mucus plug.

At the same time as this if sat or lay down it leads to pains right at the bottom of my abdomen which build and build, if I don’t stand up and move around they become unbearable (feel nauseous, cold sweat level
of pain). These coincided with bright red bleeding.

By this point the contractions had tailed off.

Called triage as I wasn’t expecting to see bright red blood and they asked me to come in. Blood was thought to be due to cervical dilation as everything else checked out fine and midwife said it sounded like early labour.

So since then I have been having hot baths, using my gym ball, staying upright, walking, swaying. I’m still not able to sit or lie down so apart from a nap I finally managed to have earlier I have been vertical and without sleep but trying to rest as much as possible.

Contractions come back overnight and sometimes get down to 3-5 mins apart but then tail off again come daytime.

I’m producing lots of brown discharge and mucus which coincides with the pains. The pains are very much localized to my lower back and abdomen rather than my bump.

Ive spoken to triage for reassurance again today and they were unconcerned.

I guess I’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced this drama over their cervix dilating and what might happen next? If this is how my body deals with some discharge I’m slightly concerned about the actual birth part!!

Sorry for the length of the thread, hopefully there will soon be a squidgy baby as a reward for reading.

Could this maybe be prodromal labour? It sounds like you’re having a very long and painful early phase of labour (the stage before active). I really do sympathise. My baby is 5 weeks old and I went through a week of early contractions that didn’t progress. On the bright side, once I got to 4cm my baby was born only 2 hours later! I didn’t experience that with my 1st at all so I think all the early contractions helped.

There’s no helpful advise I can give I’m afraid. Try to get as much sleep as you can manage. My true labour started after I spent a good hour vigorously bouncing on an exercise ball (but I also had plenty of rest before).

I wish you the best of luck, I’m sure you’ll be meeting your lovely baby soon. Just remember it won’t last forever.

I kind of disagree with the above.
Your body is moving in the right direction, and things are clearly progressing, just more stop/start, which can happen for any number of reasons.

Make sure you feel safe and relaxed to get that oxytocin flowing which is the hormone that contracts the uterus. Without it you won't be going anywhere.
Nice food, relaxing bath, dark room, funny movie, anything to get you feeling safe and happy.

If OP is still in labour she’s got bigger issues!

Yes but that's my point, if it's not progressing and things have stalled it's oxytocin you need to ramp things up again. Trust me, I'm not 'woo' at all, it's based in science.

Hope you're getting on OK OP 💐

@RapunzelHadExtensionscheck the posting date!