Are you in labour or not?

Congratulations! You are pregnant and waiting for your new bundle of joy to arrive! Nine months spent nurturing and housing your baby is not easy, well done.

When your baby is ready to be born, you will go through a process called labour. Labour is simply a series of events occurring in your genital tract that helps your baby come out of your uterus.

This process is majorly characterized by painful contractions. However, it can be challenging to tell when you are having real labour pains or practice contractions.  Here are a few tips to help you differentiate between when you are in labour and when you are not:

• Real labour pain is regular and gets more frequent, lasts longer, and grows more painful with time.
• Labour pains are felt in the abdomen and radiating to the back and cannot be relieved with standard pain medications.
• If you are in labour, you will feel a gush of fluid coming from your vagina. This is usually referred to as your “water breaking”.

These are a few signs to get you started, but whenever you are in doubt, call your doctor.