What Are Contractions?
Contractions
During your pregnancy, depending on how far along you are, you may have felt some contractions, mostly the tightening of your abdomen. Those are just warm-ups for your uterus. Now you are nearing the end of your pregnancy and your baby is ready to leave behind the womb and come out into the world. Your body starts preparing for birth with contractions of muscles in your uterus. These muscles squeeze and contract, tightening the top of your uterus, pushing your baby downward into the birth canal. Contractions also help to thin the cervix, so that the baby can be born.
What Do They Feel Like?
Contractions can be experienced in different ways by different people. You may feel them as lower abdominal cramps—a bit like bad period pain. Or it may be like a persistent and dull ache in your lower back. Some women experience a pain in their inner thigh that runs down their legs.
Contractions come as waves, each one building to a peak and ebbing away. You will feel them starting in the back and moving to the front. Your abdomen will feel tight during each contraction.
Contractions begin slowly at first, and as labour progresses, they build up in intensity and frequency. Generally they stop and start—sometimes they come in layers, on top of one another.
Do my contractions indicate active labour?
Giving birth for the first time? You may end up confusing abdominal tightening (which is experienced during the second and third trimesters) with labour contractions. This is very different from labour contractions—the discomfort comes and goes without getting stronger and closer together. These are just signs that your uterus is prepping for delivery.
Typically, labour contractions happen at regular intervals, about 4-5 minutes apart. They typically last around 30 to 70 seconds, and should get more consistent, intense, and frequent as your labour progresses. They have a rhythm, a pattern.
Figuring out the way your contractions are going, and having your partner timing the duration of contractions will help you know how the labour is progressing, track the stages of labour, help find out when you are in active labour and should go to the hospital or birth center.
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