Pre-Labour Signs: How to Know Your Body Is Getting Ready

My body started announcing labour well before labour actually started. Learning these signals beforehand turned the last weeks from anxious guessing into pattern recognition.

The signs

• Lightening - the baby drops lower, and suddenly you can breathe again (and need the bathroom more).
• Braxton Hicks contractions - practice contractions; irregular, and they fade.
• Nesting - a burst of energy and the sudden conviction that the closets must be reorganized today.
• Swelling - common in the final stretch.
• Losing the mucus plug - a clear, pinkish, slightly bloody jelly-like discharge (the "bloody show"). One piece or fragments; if it's fragments you may not even notice. It means the body is preparing.

About water breaking

Despite every movie ever made, water breaking is usually not the first sign - it often happens much later in labour. If it is your first sign, call your provider, and note TACO before you do: Time it happened, Amount, Color, Odor. They will ask.

When it's the real thing

True labour contractions tend to start in the lower back and wrap around to the abdomen. The hospital rule of thumb: 5-1-1 - contractions five minutes apart, lasting one minute, for a full hour. One important exception: if you're before 37 weeks and have four or more contractions in an hour, call your provider right away.

Don't try to do this math in your head while it's happening. I used the Contractions app to actually time mine - you tap once when a contraction starts and once when it ends, and it logs the length and the gap between them automatically, so the 5-1-1 pattern is something you can just look at instead of guess at.