Q: What are some of the first signs of labor?

A: Sometimes when you're in prenatal classes other women will scare you to death by talking about their 32-hour labors. What you sometimes don't figure out until later on is that they sometimes start the clock running the moment they experience a bit of early labor. The early labor phase tends to be the longest phase of the first stage of labor. It can last for hours or even days.
So these are the kind of symptoms you're likely to experience as your earliest warnings that this is the real thing and you're going to get to meet your baby relatively soon:
Backache
Menstrual-like cramping
Indigestion
Diarrhea
A feeling of warmth in the abdomen
Bloody show (the passage of blood-tinged mucus)
A trickling or gushing sensation if your membranes have ruptured
Bear in mind you may only have a couple of these symptoms, so don't wait for them all to occur. A lot of women also report feeling restless, edgy, and generally uncomfortable as their body prepares for labor.