Discouraged about not being able to identify labor

Last night from 10pm to 7am I thought I was possibly in labor. I had done a lot of walking yesterday and I think that triggered a bunch of braxton hicks contractions. But these felt different from my usual ones because I had a lot of back pain and they were consistently 8-13 minutes apart which isn’t extremely consistent but I thought it was probably enough considering it went on for 9 hours. Normally it’s just my abdomen tightening without back pain and it’d last only like an hour max. But the back pain with the contractions last night/this morning started to get pretty painful, maybe a 7/10 and I don’t use those numbers lightly. I was worried about being wrong and not in labor so I decided to get in the bath because they weren’t getting closer together, they were stuck around 10 minutes apart. It helped with the pain (but not the frequency) and I managed to fall asleep after getting out because I was exhausted. Then I woke up at noon and was fine- just like one contraction an hour today and they’re not super painful. I feel really discouraged now and don’t trust myself to be able to know when it really is time. :( I’m 36 weeks along and my baby is measuring quite large. So I’m terrified about realizing I’m in labor too late and not being able to get an epidural