is this early labour

I’m 39+6 today. Yesterday I went Christmas shopping and spent a lot of time on my feet walking around. I had a lot of mucous discharge so I think I lost a bit of my plug.

I was having twingey period cramps last night, went to bed around 10pm.

This morning I’ve woken up every hour from around 1am with quite painful period cramps. I’ve been able to go back to sleep until now, I’ve had to get up and grab a heating pad and take some paracetamol.

Do you think this is early labour? When I saw my midwife 2 days ago they said the baby’s head wasn’t engaged at all and I might need a c section so I haven’t been expecting to go naturally.