Contraction "pain scale" confusion...

Alaina117

Hey all. I've been googling like crazy for the last hour and finally decided to post here. I'll be 37 weeks pregnant tomorrow, and I started having regular contractions last night around 8ish. On Monday, the midwife and ob I saw at my appointment said to call if I have more than 3 contractions in an hour. By 8:40, I had had at least 7--roughly 4-7 minutes apart. So I called. The ob on-call asked me a bunch of questions, then asked me to rate the contractions on a scale of 1-10. There were uncomfortable, but not really painful--so I guessed 4? He said to call back if my contractions were between 3-5 minutes apart and the pain was a 7 or 8.

I know 1 is no pain, and 10 is the worst pain imaginable, but I'm a little lost at the in-between. Is 2 barely noticeable, 3 slightly more noticeable, 4 uncomfortable but no pain, etc? What's 7? Not able to walk through them, but still able to talk? I had contractions all day today, but they were anywhere from 30 min-2 hours apart, but now they're starting to get stronger and closer together and my back hurts a bit. I don't want to call back because of the hassle of talking to the answering service, just to get that same doctor....to me, when I was in labor with my daughter, I was definitely at the hospital and cranky when my pain was 7-8.

I have a decent drive to the hospital this time (at least 35 minutes), plus my parents live 30 minutes away and they're who I'd call to come over to take care of my daughter--and labor with my daughter from being at 3cm dialated to delivery was less than 5 hours. (This was after going into preterm labor with her 3 times, and having to go to the hospital to have it stopped). I don't want a home birth this time, so...should I be kind of a baby about the pain scale thing? What would you do?