False Labor

As you near the end of your pregnancy, you may start noticing signs and feeling symptoms of false labor. They can set in one month or one day before you actually give birth - only time will tell. The question is how will you know when it's real - and when it's not?

Often, it can be difficult to tell whether you are in true labor or having false labor. Generally, your health care provider will be able to tell if you are in labor by checking your cervix to determine if it is effaced (thinned) and dilated (opened).

The following are some tips that may help you to distinguish true labor from false labor:

The Real Thing (True Labor)

• After timing the contractions, you determine that they are coming consistently and getting closer together.
• Each contraction is lasting anywhere from 30-70 seconds, and they are getting longer.
• The contractions do not go away even if you change your level of activity.
• Usually with true labor, the contractions have a radiating feeling in your lower back and upper abdomen.
• The intensity of the contractions becomes greater as time progresses.
• During a contraction, you are unable to talk to other people or laugh at a joke.

False Start (False Labor)

• The contractions continue to be irregular or have a sporadic pattern.
• There is no consistent length or intensity of contractions and no pattern develops.
• No clear change or increase in the intensity of the contractions.
• May feel the contraction lower in abdomen without the radiation feeling.
• Changing activities affects the contractions.

Remember the list above includes the most common findings between true and false labor, but every woman and baby are different. You may still be unclear whether you are in true labor, and it is always better to call your health care provider for guidance.

The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.

© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.

© 1997- All rights reserved.