Is this normal?

[KateTTC123]

DS arrived at 29 weeks from spontaneous labour which started with my waters breaking so, at almost 31 weeks in this pregnancy I am always on high alert for the same thing happening again. I've been in and out of triage a lot with false alarms as I have irritable uterus.
At the moment I'm having really bad back pain. I took paracetamol about 1.5 hours ago and have had a hot water bottle strapped to me for 2 hours but it's not helped. It is a bit achy in a period pain way too but no tightenings yet.
I want to call triage but can't face going in and with my history they always make me go in. I've never had a 3rd trimester but I hear that backache is quite common. Is this normal? What I really want to do is for triage to tell me a time by which things should be improving otherwise to call back.

I'd call triage, I had that at around 36 weeks and it was a UTI, but UTI's can bring on labour so definitely a good reason to give them a call

Thank you for your reply. I did end up calling triage and was honest with them about wanting to avoid coming in if possible so they suggested a bath and paracetamol every 4 hours. That seems to have done the trick. I have a massive bump this time so I think that explains the backache. It's just so hard to know what's normal when the only thing I've experienced is a pregnancy that I thought was progressing normally but actually wasn't! Luckily I have an appointment with the perinatal mental health team today to hopefully help with my anxiety.