does your chest tighten when you have a contraction?

This might sound really weird...but I can feel a contraction coming on. Maybe it's my lungs that tighten, which makes my breathing a little different, and I also feel a funny sensation in my head. Then seconds later my belly gets all hard and uncomfortable. Does anyone else have this?

 

I experience what you're describing too--but my uterus is so far up in my ribs that the soft cartilage end of my sternum has actually turned up like the end of a ski, so I think its actually my uterus hardening that I'm feeling, and its putting pressure on my diaphragm, which is in turn putting pressure on my lungs.

 

I definitely feel that too...it doesn't exactly tighten, but I feel funny and my breathing is different. I can feel the contraction coming on before it does (kind of starts in head and rolls down my body).

 

same thing here...hard to breath then it comes on.

 

Definitely felt the same things. I first started having Braxton Hicks when my hubby and I were on vacation in Florida. We were driving around south beach and I was suddenly out of breath and my stomach was getting tight. It really freaked me out since we were so far from home. I made it though to the very end, so I think it's perfectly normal.

 

Thank you for letting me know I"m not crazy I noticed today that the tightening occurs in my throat and head, then my chest, then abdomen. How weird is pregnancy???

 

I just started noticing this too. Odd how I'll get this wierd sensation in my chest and then have a change in my breathing. If I put my hand on my belly, I can feel it getting really hard. Never imagined it to be this way

 

Finally someone else who has experienced this. When I was in the hospital on bedrest and on the monitor I could tell in advance when a contraction was coming. The nurses didn't believe me that I could feel them in my head first. It was a strange pressure like feeling in my head and then sure enough a cx would show on the monitor.