Early 1st Stage Labor Time Frame

Video Transcript

"So this is the time frame of early first stage labor. The main thing you need to remember about this is that this is just an average. Every single woman has a different experience, and with every single pregnancy and labor they have a different experience, so this is just an average, yours might be completely different. Please keep that in mind. So, right here, you're dilating from zero to three centimeters, and in just a minute I'll show you what that actually looks like. Your contractions here are going to be five to thirty minutes apart. They're going to last about thirty to fifty seconds long. The time frame of early first stage labor is anywhere from twelve to twenty-four hours. Again, this is just an average. Some women are going to have maybe a six hour early first stage. Some women might have a two day time frame. It's just very different. And also with the contractions, yours can be longer, yours can be closer, and you are still feeling the other signs. It's different for every single person. The main thing to remember about early first stage labor is to just go about your daily business. The contractions at this point are not very strong. There can be still very irregular. They might not even be in a pattern that you even notice how close they are together, so you just want to go about whatever you're doing at that time anyways. So this is actually what your cervixes do. When your cervix starts it's at zero centimeters; it's completely closed up. So this is two and this is four, so you're going to go from completely closed up to three, which would be right in between these two. And that's how much you're dilating in early first stage labor."