My first trip (and fall) to L&D

Well, yesterday I was my usual graceful self and managed to trip over a computer wire in my office. Thankfully, I fell straight down on my knees, not my belly. I could feel both babies moving afterwards and I didn't have any bleeding or leaking, which is good. But it still freaked me out, so I called the OB. I was scheduled to start having non stress tests this week anyway, so they decided to have me come in for that a few hours earlier, so I left work right away. Brian met me at the hospital and we went up to the maternity ward for the first time.

Basically what a non stress test (NST) does is monitor the babies' heart rates, and checks to see if they accelerate with movement (which they should). It also measures any uterine contractions I might be having. Katie was being quite stubborn and wouldn't let the nurse get a good reading on her heart beat. This of course scared us, even though the nurse and I could both feel her move. The nurse eventually had to get an ultrasound machine to be able to see exactly where her heart was. Finally, after what seemed like forever, she found the heartbeat. Remind me to ground Katie later for being a brat :)

Danny was much more cooperative than his sister and she found heart rate right away. So there were 2 monitors strapped to my belly, then a third was placed to measure my contractions. Plus an absurdly tight blood pressure cuff that I swear was going to cut my arm off. Oh, and I was supposed to stay perfectly still through all this. That was fun. Plus, I'm supposed to go back and do this twice a week.

Overall, the wndrtwns did very well and were moving around a lot. There was no reason to believe that the fall caused any problems. That was certainly a relief. I was told to drink a lot more water - it's possible that dehydration was causing the sporadic Braxton Hicks contractions I've been having the last week or so.

Oh, and today is a bittersweet anniversary - it was exactly one year ago today I found out I was pregnant the first time.