Possibly dumb question? counting hours of labour

abmommy15

When counting the number of hours you are in labour when do you start? Is it from the very first contraction or do you start counting when they become regular?

Starynightsky24

With DS I counted it at active labor.

Early labor can last forever... And looking back I may have been in early labor for 24 hours. For me it was just consistent, timable, contractions. Uncomfortable, but bearable.

I went from 1cm dilated to 10 in less than 3 hours though... So that's what I count as labor.

Joie80

I counted from the start of regular contractions

breezymeema7

I have always counted from the first contraction to delivery. But mine have always been really short so it's easy to do so.

jlsweets

I started counting from the first and only start of contractions leading up to birth.

907_baby

Mine was easy to count. My water broke spontaneously, which then triggered regular contractions. (No contractions prior to water breaking.) So I didn't really have "early labor" to consider.

LEGALLYblonde86

With DD my alarm went off at 7am, had my first contraction and thet were every 4 minutes from that very moment. I counted from then. I never left the hospital and figure if I wasnt in active labor they would have sent me hone. I was 21 hours with 3 of pushing

sschwege

I started counting from when contractions were strong enough I could no longer ignore them, which is to say if I could walk/talk/sleep during the contractions that didn't count, in my mind.

JNOVA2015

Just out of curiosity, why would this ever matter? Just so that when you yell at your kid 10 years from now you can say "I was in labor with you for 46 hours!!!!"?

lap018

JNOVA2015 said:

Just out of curiosity, why would this ever matter? Just so that when you yell at your kid 10 years from now you can say "I was in labor with you for 46 hours!!!!"?

Well duh, why else?