Sometime toward the middle of your pregnancy (or even earlier), you may notice the muscles of your uterus tightening for anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. Not all women feel these random, usually painless contractions, which get their quirky name from John Braxton Hicks, an English doctor who first described them in 1872. As your pregnancy progresses, these contractions may become more intense and even painful at times. When they start to become more intense and frequent, they're referred to as false labor. False labor may feel like the real thing, but the contractions will still be irregular in intensity, frequency, and duration and can taper off and then disappear altogether. In other words, if you ever notice that your contractions are easing up in any way, they're most likely Braxton Hicks. Doctors and midwives believe that Braxton Hicks contractions are part of prelabor and serve to get the process of effacement and dilation (when the cervix begins to thin out and open up) going in preparation for delivery.
I posted this info because I've been having these contractions pretty frequently within the past couple of weeks. I wasn't sure what they were at first--they just feel like pressure, and then my belly gets really tight and feels firm for 30-60 seconds. Not at all what I thought they would be!
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