Non Stress Test

37 weeks 4 days
Today we went to Labor & Delivery for a non stress test (NST). I woke up during the night with sharp cramping and pressure in my lower abdomen. I was able to get some sleep and in the morning, it still had not gone away so I called the OB. I was also concerned because by 11:00 this morning, I still had not felt Jack moving and that is unusual for him. The OB thought I could possibly be in labor and wanted me to head to the hospital so Jeff and I started the mad dash to get ready.

I had not yet packed our hospital bad, installed the car seat or finished my mile long list of things I wanted to do before Jack arrives. As Jeff is trying to pack our bag I was saying things like, "we might be coming home with a baby and the bed isn't made!" and "I needed to do laundry this week!" All of a sudden, after months of waiting, I was freaking out that we might actually be having our baby!

We checked into L&D and got set up in a room and hooked up to the monitors. They put one on to measure baby's heartbeat and one to measure contractions. During an NST they are looking for the baby's heart rate to rise when it moves. They call these accelerations, and they want to see a certain number of accelerations in a 20-30 minute period. A heart rate that doesn't rise with movement could mean that the baby is not getting enough oxygen, or some other sort of fetal distress. Of course our normally active boy was totally stubborn and kept refusing to move and they had trouble getting accelerations. I was given a huge glass of grape juice to drink and that finally did the trick! Our Monkey got moving and the on-call OB was pleased.

The monitor did not pick up any contractions which is good, so we were sent home with orders to rest and get plenty of fluids. I don't think we'll have a problem with the resting because as soon as I stand up the pressure and cramping is so intense that I don't make it very far before I sit back down again. The on-call OB said the pressure and cramping are due to Jack dropping lower into the birth canal (good sign!). We see my regular OB on Tuesday so hopefully she'll give some hope that he's going to be making an appearance soon!