Symptoms of onset of labour and early labour: A scoping review

Early labour care often insufficiently addresses the individual needs of pregnant women leading to great dissatisfaction. In-depth knowledge about symptoms of onset of labour and early labour is necessary to develop women-centred interventions.

To provide an overview on the current evidence about pregnant women's symptoms of onset of labour and early labour.

We conducted a scoping review in the five databases PubMed, Web of Science, CINHAL Complete, PsychInfo and MIDIRS in May 2021 and August 2022 using a sensitive search strategy. A total of 2861 titles and abstracts and 290 full texts were screened independently by two researchers using Covidence. For this article, data was extracted from 91 articles and summarised descriptively and narratively.

The most frequently mentioned symptoms were 'Contractions, labour pain' (n = 78, 85.7 %), 'Details about the contractions' (n = 51 articles, 56.0 %), 'Positive and negative emotions' (n = 50, 54.9 %) and 'Fear and worries' (n = 48 articles, 52.7 %). Details about the contractions ranged from a slight pulling to unbearable pain and the emotional condition varied from joy to great fear, showing an extraordinary diversity of symptoms highlighting the very individual character of early labour.

A comprehensive picture of varying and contradicting symptoms of onset of labour and early labour was drawn. Different experiences indicate different needs. This knowledge builds a good basis to develop women-centred approaches to improve early labour care.

Further research is necessary to design individualised early labour interventions and evaluate their effectiveness.