I know they can feel different for everyone but mine felt like a strong period cramp with some pressure in my back, they didn’t really get more intense or anything and if they did i didn’t notice due to the epidural but that’s what mine felt like! ❤️
For me I didn’t really have much Braxton hicks. Just lightening pain a lot. Contractions for me went from 0 to 100. When my water broke 2am ish and then it was slow from there leaking slowly got the next hour and a half. Then I started feeling what I could compare to period cramps. At 3:30am that’s when the real deal started…. Pain was so unbearable. I should have started doing everything fast but my husband and I were hesitant to take off. It started every 5 minutes slowly getting intense longer. I was starting to have problems walking because of the pain right at 3:30ish When I go to the hospital, I was having contractions pretty much the whole time, and I was not getting too many breaks in between . . So definitely water can break and slowly leak and contractions can go from 0 to 100. So if I were you right when your water breaks just get going. You do not want to feel that pain and you want them to start looking at you because it takes a little bit for the labs to come back.
My water never broke on its own and needed some help with a membrane sweep but I had intense braxton hicks that felt like period cramps and weren't able to go away with movement or hydration so I thought they were real until I fell asleep through them. When real contractions hit it woke me from a dead sleep around 3:30 and the pain hit me like a total pain seize of the abdomen and lower back at the same time all I could do was moan in pain. They also got close enough so that I could time them where as before it was difficult. There is a big difference between braxton hicks and real ones.
I had period like cramps for about 6 hours one night. Felt like strong menstrual cramps instead of just tightening. I couldn’t really track them since they felt constant and kept waking me up. Finally I saw some pink when wiping and my water broke. Contractions never started so I had to head to the hospital and eventually start Pitocin to force them.