by Kate Rosenberger

Created on: July 09, 2008   Last Updated: July 18, 2008

First time expectant mothers often ponder the question of what contractions feel like. How painful are they? How do you tell the difference between real contractions and false labor? It is hard to describe what a contraction feels like to someone who has never experienced one. I can only relate how contractions felt to me during my labor.

They started one afternoon late in my third trimester. It was three days before I was scheduled to be induced. I suddenly had that familiar feeling that a woman gets once a month. Since this doesn't happen during pregnancy it was my first clue that the contractions were starting.

Throughout that first evening, they were no more than faint cramps that came and went every twenty minutes or so. At this point they were more like a dull ache than real pain so I went to bed to get some rest. In the middle of the night, about ten hours after they had started, the contractions began to feel like full blown cramps. For all of you men, they were something like a mild headache that comes and goes. Of course they were in the stomach instead of the head. They were just bad enough that sleep wasn't possible. Still, the pain level was more than tolerable.

The contractions continued this way through the night and into the next day. They came slightly closer together (every ten or fifteen minutes) but didn't become any stronger. Strangely enough, every time I ate they seemed to stop for about an hour.

Late that second evening, about thirty hours after they had started, they suddenly increased. The contractions came every five or ten minutes and the pain was becoming more and more unbearable. The only thing I can liken them to would be the lower leg cramps that some people get in the middle of the night. They came on quick, were very painful, and then stopped abruptly. It was difficult to concentrate on anything by this time.

I went to the hospital about an hour later. The contractions were five minutes apart and agonizing. The pain wasn't unbearable but it was difficult not only to think clearly but to stay still during a contraction. The pain was becoming sharper and more constant. Each one seemed to last longer than the one before. I would say that they felt similar to a severe toothache or migraine but that doesn't begin to do them justice.

After a couple of hours at the hospital I was given the epidural that I had signed up for months earlier. Up until that day I was undecided as to whether or not I would go through with the epidural. The pain was indescribable at this point. It wasn't unbearable but it was close. The thought of going through the actual labor without the epidural was unimaginable. For anyone nervous about the pain involved in placing the epidural itself, don't be. At this point I would have let someone hit me in the head with a baseball bat if they promised that it would make the pain stop. And stop it did. Less than ten minutes later, the lower half of my body was blissfully and completely numb.

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