I didn't know when I had my first contractions. I felt something that woke me up and kept waking me up every 30 minutes overnight but they had stopped by morning, I thought they were BH. It wasn't until a week later and I was induced and had what I knew where contractions and went 'oh, that's what I got last friday night!'.

When I had period type pain I don't remember it going back to nothing but with the actual contractions, yes, I did go back to normal with no pain between contractions.