Sometimes Mittelschmerz is experienced as a short, sharp burst of pain. When this happens, it's because the ovarian follicle doesn't come with a handy escape hatch for the egg. Instead, the egg just fucking bursts out of there like the Kool-Aid man.

Pain from the egg bursting out is pretty short-lived, though can be quite intense. Sometimes you might experience the pain as definitively to one side or the other, depending on which ovary.

And sometimes Mittelschmerz is experienced more as a duller pain that goes on for a few hours. You might imagine that the egg just whizzes down the uterine tube like a helter-skelter. This is not, in fact, how it works. The tube squeezes that egg down like a tube of toothpaste.

It's this squeezing action (peristalsis) which might be experienced as the dull, aching pain around ovulation.