Pre/early labour (up to 4cms) as you have been told (I think it was you or someone else LOL) isn't active labour - because the contractions are not getting longer, stronger or closer together - there are none of them. It's prework before it gets active, so it is doing some great work even though you can't feel it or see it yet. You could be in prelabour for hours, days, weeks. But the good news is, once it's active, it's usually all up from there