That sounds like pre-labour to me - or at least my experience of it. I had quite a lot of prelabour for weeks with DD2 and there were quite a few occasions where they were strong enough that I thought it was the real thing - so much so I'm worried this time about mistaking it for pre-labour when it IS the real thing and not making it to the hospital on time. DD1 was more of a ho hum kind of thing that I could easily ignore.