With my first child, I experienced small twinges that grew into contractions overnight. When I woke up in the morning, I went to the hospital and was given an epidural. My son was born three hours later, and the process was fairly painless throughout (before the medication, the contractions hurt but were very manageable). My second child was entirely different. I had one giant contraction that felt like horrible bowel pain, and then another within a minute after the first. We left for the hospital immediately and barely made it there in time; my labor was less than fifty minutes from start to finish, and it was incredibly painful from the first contraction.

For my first baby, I actually thought I was going to be past my due date as I felt great. So I awoke to a pop which I thought was gas...then I pushed just to see and thought I urinated in my bed. I hurried up and got to the toilet and assumed the baby was on my bladder. Actually my water broke without me realizing it. Then I went to work and had some cramping which felt like a bowel cramp and I kept urinating and going moving my bowels, so I assumed it was just bowel cramps. Then I felt worse, left work, and went home at 10:30 am. At home I became worse with more cramping, then became I unable to talk. I arrived at the hospital at 11:30 am and the baby was out at 12:30pm. I had no bleeding until about 11:15 am.

Going into labor naturally with my second child I found painful but bearable. I concentrated on my breathing and nothing else, I found this helped me to stay relaxed and so my body didn't tense up. The contractions throughout are definitely the hardest part, once fully dilated I found the rest not too bad. I'm 2 weeks away from having my 3rd baby, I hope I go into natural labor again!