how do you time labour?

[GBLiz]

when people say their labour took X hours...at what point does it count as labour and you start timing it?

just wondered!

 

[1sttimemum]

i normally take it from the first contraction as that is the hard part isnt it??


Obviously i am not an expert as my name would suggest

X

 

[Emmylou]

I counted it from regular contractions......and therefore I count myself as having been in labour for 12 hours

 

[Reena]

yup same here...from contractions every 5 mins or so? suppose that isnt accurate but thats when ur sorta countin down properly and really feeling em...mine was 20 hours..and then an emergency section

 

[kalia]

The hospital here counts it as from when you go into active labour - 3/4 cm, around 3 strong contractions in 10 minutes. So when they said in classes that first labour takes 8-18 hours they meant from then - you could be having contractions for days before.

But that's from a medical point of view (by 18 hours they will be getting twitchy about getting the baby out). From a personal point of view you can say from whenever. I'd be tempted to say from first contraction.

 

[Sophie1102]

Wow I thought it was from feeling the fist contraction,

which would be 10 hours for my first and 17 for my second (but only because they let me go an extra 7 hours before they decided to break my waters!!!!! )

But if it is from 3cm dilated then it would be 3 hours for my first and 10hours that should really have been 3hours also if they had just got on and broken my waters, when they did I went from 4-10cm and had baby in 15 mins!!!!

 

[Flame]

I started counting from when i had regular pains. If i had gone from being 3/4 cms i would have been in agony for at least a day before getting to that point. and i was stuck at four for a good few hours to.

 

[muppetmummy]

With James I counted from the first regular contractions which was 12 hours. (but was getting mild pains on and off from 12 hours before hand)

On my hospital notes it says
first stage 2 hrs 40 mins (must mean from when I was 3-4 cm)
second stage 49 minutes
third stage 29 minutes (with the injection)

 

[paradysso]

i only counted active labour, so when i was from 4cm - 10cm. any thing before that i was able to clean house ect so didnt count

 

[kalia]

You guys give me hope - it sounds like labour can go a lot more quickly than I thought Hooray
That said, my friend had her baby last Thursday and from first contraction to birth was 26 hours

 

[sianny]

I was confused with this and would cringe when hearing about women in labour for 46 hours etc.. When we went to antenatal classes we were assured by several different midwives that nobody is in 'established' labour for this amount of time. They don't class you as being in labour until you are 4cm or more dilated. So the contractions building upto that don't count. (known as latent phase)
I hope the whole process won't last days tho, must be soooo tiring

 

[muppetmummy]

Until this thread I never knew they didn't class it as active labour until 4cm

I've spent the last 5 years thinking it was 12 hours, when infact it was just under 4 hours

 

[Lou]

There are 3 stages and they can all take different amounts of time but there are some 'rules' hospitals follow for example once you are about 3 cm's dilated and having regular contractions you are in established labour and this is the first stage. The midwives will then want you to contract and dilate at a certain rate, obviously depending on how baby is coping with the contractions, then they decide whether to break your waters, if they haven't already broken, to speed things up and help get things going and/or they can put you on a drip to help the contractions along. Roughly you should dilate at least a cm an hour and you need to dilate 10 cm's. The second stage happens once you are fully dilated and this stage is pushing and delivery and should take anything up to an hour but then again that would depend how baby is coping and coming down the birth canal. The last stage is delivering the placenta which shouldn't take long and should be straight forward.

All stages can be effected by your health, babies stress levels and pain relief (epidurals slow things down) but they wouldn't for example leave you dilating in established labour for days on end without intervening.

I'm no expert so please don't take my words as gospel, I'm sure some people will disagree with me