Weekly Non-Stress-Tests

So, for the past 3 weeks or so, we've had a standing appointment over at the hospital for a "Non-Stress-Test" (NST) to be performed. A few weeks ago, we were sitting in the OB office trying to select which day of the week would work best for us. I turned to Meg and said "I don't think we have anything planned this weekend, so Saturday would work fine." The doc then interjected: "From here-on-out, your life is over and you don't have any weekend plans!"

Not funny.

Anyway, we call over to the hospital every Saturday morning and find out what time works best for them (depending on how busy they are). We go over there, get checked in, go up to the 3rd floor maternity ward, and get situated in a Labor and Delivery room (LND to the docs and nurses with the "in-the-know-lingo"). So it's been kinda nice that we've gone through these dry runs of checking in and finding our way up to a LND room.

Aside from the first time we went in for one of these, I've found them to be pretty damn boring. I think this is a good thing, since they've never found either of our little ones to be under stress (perhaps that's why they're called "Non-Stress-Tests"?). The NST involves hooking Meg up to two separate monitors (one for each baby -- gotta make sure they're listening to separate babies and not picking up the same heart rate) and then another monitor that checks for uterus contractions. The goal is to find at least two escalations in the babies' heart rates within a 20-minute period. Sometimes the babies don't cooperate and we're there for 40 minutes or an hour, but this past Saturday we were hooked up and released in a half-hour.

Below is an image of a 36+ week pregnant woman with twins getting an NST (no, it's not a beached whale but we understand the confusion) and a short video of the NST in action. Please note that the pink and blue tags on the monitor belts do not mean anything - for those of you who are eagerly awaiting news on the genders of the babies!