Constant pain in labour - how is it caused? Can it be prevented?

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Next week I'm scheduled to spend an hour with my midwife discussing plans for the birth of my fifth child, due in October. (I bet I'm out in 15 minutes or less.) Hopefully it'll be a VBAC, but I'm not worried about that and I don't have any questions about the labour that ended up in caesarean, that's all fine.

I do have a worry about my first two, completely straightforward labours, in which I had constant, serious pain between contractions. I don't know if I even explained during the labours that I was experiencing this, because it wasn't until my third (induced, with twins) labour that I had something to compare them with and realised the books weren't just lying!

I want this labour to be more like the third than the first or second, but how?

I had constant monitoring and was stuck on a bed for all three labours, so the only differences were
a) the presence of 2 babies (nothing I can do about that!)
b) being induced with a drip (not possible with VBAC).

Having read on this site about some odd and just plain wrong things midwives have said, I don't have confidence that my particular midwife will know anything about this. Did you have constant pain? Were you able to prevent it in a subsequent labour and if so, how? Any midwives who know what causes it?

Answers would be very gratefully received.

I had constant back pain heightening during cc on ds who was op presentation. on dd I only had back pain during cc. The differences were:

A)dd was in right position
B)I stayed at home at dd ds I was strapped to bed from first cc.
C)I stayed mobile on dd
D)waters broke first on ds
E)I also stayed mainly on all fours for dd
hope this helps.

with dd i had constant pain despite being on all fours and in a pool. she was back to back.

Thank you both.

Midwives never said anything about the postioning of the babies. I could swear that at least the first was born looking up at the ceiling. I can't be sure about the second as I was a bit loopy on pethidine - husband says she was looking up too. Would that mean they'd both have been posterior?

The pain wasn't confined to my back though, it was through my whole abdomen.

Will ask my midwife tomorrow and see if she has anything useful to say. Consultant wanted me in hospital from first sign of labour and constant monitoring, but maybe midwife will disagree?

At my appointment my midwife didn't think back to back positioning of the baby would cause the constant pain I experienced. She said in those circumstances she'd assume something was going wrong (though since I gave birth to healthy children both times, obviously nothing was going wrong).

So just a question of wait and see if it happens again! Sorry to anyone who finds this question on a search in future, as I still don't have an answer.

It really did take an hour after all! The purple-edged forms were new since my last pregnancy.