Kick me!

Just so you know, regardless of my tales of paranoia, I actually try not to be a nervous mom or a nervous Preggosaurus. Sometimes, though, it comes out and you're going to hear about it here. Otherwise, the majority of what you'd read would consist of things like this:

Everything's OK. Nothing to see here. Butterflies and roses are flying out our butts. Move along!

But no life is always that cheery, so you get to hear about the exciting times. Sometimes the excitement is of the negative sort.

Take, for example, today. (Here it comes!)

I mentioned, just recently, that the twins are kicking up a storm. They had been until this past weekend. Over the weekend, I noticed a drop in the amount of kicking I was getting from Logan. Normally, when Emma starts kicking away, he kicks back but that didn't seem to be happening. I let the first day pass and started paying attention more.

The next day, I deliberately sugared up and then reclined in a chair to see what would happen. Some movement, but none of the dancing that Emma was engaging in. Worry set in.

Then yesterday was the 4th of July (Hey, happy 4th!) and there was some movement, but not a whole lot. So I announced to Eric that today, after the glucose tolerance test (Uh...yum? Bleah!) in the morning, we'd go see the docs and see if they would take a look at me/us. Turns out that it's amazing how a whole different level of fear can put your fear of needles into sudden perspective.

You know, of course, that I put some research time in before going to the doctor so that I might have an inkling of what might be going on. The main thing I ran across was difficulties with the umbilical cord - twisting, cutting off the supply of nutrients and oxygen and actually tying into knots. Ewww! I don't recommend looking that one up - nothing like reading about fetal death with your breakfast. Then off we went. I called the office on our way to the draw and they took me quite seriously and told me to head to the hospital for monitoring that they couldn't do in the office, after the blood draw. Went there, did that and then headed to the hospital wing.

I'm not sure why I felt like such an idiot to tell the nurse about my decreased kicking and fears, but I did. Emma has been fine, I was really only worried about Logan. So I changed into one of their fantastically flattering backless gowns, rolled onto the elevated exam bed and got my stomach good and gooped. They attached two fetal monitors to check the heart rate on each baby and, as it turned out, had to chase those suckers around a bit to home in on the heart rates. They were moving. Logan was moving. This was an excellent sign, but we still needed to capture heart rate information to make sure he wasn't decelerating frequently.

Did I mention that I hadn't eaten for 2 hours before taking the 5 oz of orange flavored glucose solution and by now it was another 2 hours later? Uh, yeah. I was starting to get hungry, but I was more nervous than hungry. I was fully prepared to sit there as long as it took to find out what was going on.

The twins were being tricksy enough that my nurse sent for another with a better rep. Suddenly there were two nurses and much 'splainin' on my part about what was going on. They were very kind and never once indicated that I might be wrong or confused or paranoid. They agreed that I should follow my instincts and get checked out. So there we all were, checking me out and listening to tiny trains as they accelerated and decelerated normally. A couple more hours passed by, the doc came in and assured me that from the data they had collected that everything seemed fine (At one point, when the twins were being extra squirmy, there was discussion of an ultrasound which didn't pan out.) and to not hesitate to call should something seem amiss.

Suddenly, it was all over.

Exhale!

Everything is fine.