Wheeeeeee FUN :) How exciting!!
It can take days...usually doesn't though. Don't you hate that ambiguous "when the pain is too much" thing? For ME...the best description of when the pain really gets going, are the cramps right before you have to run to the bathroom with diarrhea. When you start feeling diarrhea "ugh! Ouch!" would bend over double (if you could, but have got this passenger in the way). It's time to head to the hospital.
Until then...try and get some sleep.
* * *
Just a note on pitocin: It can stop a labor hot or cold. Meaning, that a naturally progressing labor can just get "stuck" where it is...or the utereus just sort of twitches and spasms but the contractions stop. It's also SUPER painful. In nursing/med school we get taught to avoid it whenever possible (aka, only use it to induce, not when someone's already in labor...unless as a last step before emergency c-section)...because it caused the uterus to start contracting in EVERY direction, and not just down. Aka...it causes a really ineffective labor, that usually takes longer and hurts a lot more.
This isn't what USED to be taught, and it's not what is practiced by a lot of nurses (who are the notorious givers of 'automatic' or 'procedural' pitocin doses). If you have any choice in the matter whatsoever, avoid it.
Yay. I know. One MORE thing to think about. <grinning> That's okay, though, because as soon as things do start hurting you won't actually be thinking about anything. Even if 50 people started parading through your room doing the conga :) You'll bark orders like a drill sgt, or they won't even matter.
Congratulations love.