My night time nightmare - PLEASE HELP

[islandlassie]

I'm 38 + 2 and have been looking like i will be a bit early.

OK so Sunday night i KEPT waking up with bump taunt (same as BH tightness - pretty damn tight) but very sore, which would be worse if i lied in certain positions, in some positions i would barely feel it.

So woke up monday and carried on day with nothing happening and forgot all about it.

Then last night the same again. I mean really sore and bump would just stay tight for ages (or as far as my barely concious mind could tell anyway) so i got up at half five worried something was wrong and pain died away.

Half six and i get a sudden tightening and very sore, this lasts for three minutes and dies away. Again the day goes on with nothing happening APART FROM not so long ago when i was lying down on DH's chest for half an hour and it started to get really sore again.

So it seems to be when i'm lying down. I'm not sure wht the one off contraction thing was all about but i'm worried about baby and my womb and why it hurts so much whenever i go to bed or am lying. surely this isnt right? Any help would be greately appreciated.

Don't know if this is your first, but I found that my Braxton Hicks were more intense in the evening/night when I had DD1 and then when early labour started, it was also more intense at night. Unfortunately it would ease off a bit in the day, and I had a couple of days like that before things kicked off with active labour (also in the middle of the night - 1am).

I'm now 34 weeks with DD2, so we'll see what happens this time. But I wonder whether it's not just the lying down but also the timing that's causing it. The fact that it's really sore and sudden sounds just like my Braxton Hicks, and I really wouldn't worry about the baby. Different women experience them in completely different ways. Mine are giving me a lot of stop-in-your-tracks pain and breathlessness (and also nausea as things push up on my diaphragm). My Mum didn't even feel hers and was 4cm when she was examined not even knowing that she was in labour.

It sounds quite normal to me. You often get a feeling as though something major is getting started - it might be - or it might still be another couple of weeks. My yoga teacher just described it as the uterus limbering up. That said, it's impossible to be sure what someone else is feeling so call your midwife and get her opinion. But I definitely had sensations very similar to the ones you describe, especially with my second (I've got three). It went on with one or two extreme contraction a day and then all quiet - some lying down but not all - for over a week before it really kicked off.

Good luck - I bet it's fine!

I agree - this sounds like Braxton Hicks - "practice" contractions. A sign of them being Braxton Hicks and not real contractions is that you have them when you lie down, but they go away when you change position or get up.

it sounds like BH, make sure you are drinking plenty of fluids because dehydration can make them worse.