We often think of labor as beginning with your typical television show type of labor, however, for most of us labor will be something much more difficult to predict.
While everyone tells a mom she'll know when she's in labor, you don't know what that means and you might wonder if you really will know when it's time.
My best advice is to tell you that many women spend very early labor or prelabor wondering if this is the real thing, labor.
Labor: The period of contractions that change the cervix and ends with the birth of your baby.
The definition seems clear enough, but what does that mean for you?
Most women will have a series of events that tell them that their body is preparing for labor. Labor may still be days or weeks away, but it's nice to know that your body is heading the right direction.
Mucous Plug
The mucous plug is really nothing more than glorified snot. Basically it has held the position of the inside of your cervix for many moths protecting your body and baby from infection. As the cervix begins to efface and dilate little pieces of mucous can be seen in chunks or strings when wiping. Sometimes you will loose a large chunk at once, called the plug. Because the cervix is so sensitive and the blood vessels are all right on the surface you can sometimes find that the plug has pink or bloody tinge to it. Labor will usually begin possibly within days but also up to several weeks after the plug has been dislodged.
