Latent phase of labour - length?!

[Newlywed56]

Hi, currently 38w with our first little one, midwife has said I'm in the latent phase of labour this morning as having regular contractions every 10 mins for over 8 hours and really did think this was properly the beginning of it. These however stopped for a while this afternoon but have began to pick up again. However I've been getting pains like this on and off for hours since last Monday! has anyone else any similar experiences?

Worth asking on the May antenatal thread that I am on, one of the members is going through stop start contractions at the moment and others who's baby's came early also went through that

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/antenatal_clubs/2364567-May-2015-Thread-9-Babies-coming-thick-and-fast?msgid=54168774#54168774

I had a few days of contractions ramping up, irregularly and with different levels of pain from 40+0.

Got fed up, DTD, waters broke and went in to proper full blown labour.

With dd1 I was in latent labour for about 28 hours but contracting constantly but manageable.

With dd2 I was having very painful Braxton hicks for about a week before I started having regular contractions. They stopped and started but were fairly constant in that last week all day, every day.

It made for a quick labour in the end though. Think I only had around a two hour active labour with each. X

Mine is not what you want to hear as I'm afraid I had irregular contractions for 4.5 days before actual labour started. I hope you have a TENS with a boost button OP as mine just about saved my sanity. Good luck and I hope you go into labour soon!

I had contractions every 3-5 minutes for 20 hours. The good news was, I went from 2cm to pushing in under 2 hours. The midwife was really shocked as she was convinced I was in it for the long haul. All the practise contractions meant my body was a pro by the time full blown labour hit.