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I'd like to know the same thing. I am feeling cramps, and I'm 38 weeks...2 cm dilated, 75% effaced and I don't really know how to time contractions. The cramps last a couple of minutes and just fade away. They're not horribly painful, but I have a huge tolerance for pain, so I don't know.

Everything I have read and with my first two kids, usually they want you to wait until the contractions are 5 minutes apart, and lasting at least 45 seconds long for at least 1 hour. Allot of times they say when you cannot talk through one and it takes all of your concentration to get through it, head to the hospital. To time them, you start from the time you feel the beginnings of the pain, time the duration of the pain, and then when the pain comes again. The beginning of one to the beginning of another is how far apart they are. I am sure you have been told you will just "know" when you are actually in labor, which always threw me for a loop but labor contractions feel like NOTHING else, like you have never felt before. Hope this helps......Good Luck!

Five minutes apart is the norm, but ask your doctor. I always went to sleep and they went away. That's how I knew they weren't real.

they say when they are consistently 5 minutes apart, but my contractions with my first baby weren't consistant until they were 2 minutes apart, and by then they were hooking me up to an epidural. when you can't imagine that it could possibly get any more painful, you can't move, and you can barely breathe through them, time to go!

I was told to leave for the hospital if they are 5 minutes apart, with under 30 minute drive, under 10 minutes for more than a 30 minute drive.