The Stressful Non-Stress Test!

So, Saturday evening we had a little, okay, a big scare. My mom was in town and I thought, oh, it will be fun if mom came with me to my routine bi-weekly non-stress test. We went up to Labor and Delivery where they hooked me up to the monitors. I thought it would just take the usual 45 minutes and then we could head home.
I got comfortable and turned to the side that I could see and visit with my mom, but my back was to the monitor. We chit-chatted and laughed at the funny noises the babies make on the monitor. After over an hour I got to thinking, this is taking a lot longer than the last time. I just brushed it off and thought; maybe the babies aren’t being cooperative, which happens frequently. After about an hour and a half the nurse came in and grabbed the strips from the monitor and walked back out. I looked at my mom and said, “Something’s not right.” Then the nurse popped her head in the door and asked, “Can you feel those?” I asked “What?” She replied, “The contractions.” I told her, yeah, sometimes, I have been having lots of Braxton Hicks and that Dr Berg said it was normal to have more with twins. She handed me the button and asked me to mark the ones I could feel and walked back out of the room.
After a few minutes she returned and said that she had talked to the doctor on-call and he did not feel comfortable sending me home yet with contractions that where 3 minutes apart. I had not realized they were that close and regular since I could not feel all of them. He wanted them to check my cervix and repeat the fetal fibronectin test. I wasn’t too excited since I found it to be very uncomfortable when Dr Berg had taken the sample for the fetal fibronectin test two weeks ago. The nurse took the sample and checked my cervix. She said that the outer portion of my cervix was dilated to about a 1 ½ and 50% effaced. She also said that the results from the fetal fibronectin test should be back in about an hour and they would just continue to monitor me until then. She felt that the doctor would base his decision on the results of the test.
What is fetal fibronectin (fFN)?
Fetal fibronectin (fFN) is a "glue-like" protein your body makes to hold your baby in your womb. When your body is getting ready to give birth, this glue breaks down and leaks out of the uterus. Measuring the level of fetal fibronectin through a simple test can show if your body is getting ready to give birth.
From weeks 22 to 35 of pregnancy, fetal fibronectin should be almost undetectable. This test detects the presence of fetal fibronectin, which can indicate if your body is getting ready for a premature delivery.
A little over an hour the nurse returned with the results of the test. I was prepared for her to say that the results were negative and I could go home, but, the results were positive and I was still contracting. The doctor wanted her to check my cervix again two hours from the first exam. My cervix had not changed but the doctor had ordered some medication to try and slow and hopefully stop the contractions. He ordered Procardia which is used to stop contractions but also helps with pregnancy induced hypertension. We waited another hour or more to see if the medication would work. If it did I could go home on it. It slowed things down for a while but my contractions started back up again. They checked my cervix again, which still had not changed, but I still could not go home. They kept saying “We got one more thing we can try and then we might have to ship you out.” By this time Bryan had showed up.
The contractions continued and they checked me again and still nothing had changed. Shortly after this check the contractions became very painful and continued to get more painful as time passed. Mom had decided that she would go ahead and head home to Orofino and get her things packed in case they decided to fly me up to Spokane. The nurse again called the doctor who said that I could not have anything for pain because he did not want to mask any symptoms and ordered Terbutaline, which is another medication used to stop contractions. The nurse explained that if this worked it should help with the pain. She also explained that it was fairly fast acting and we should know if it was going to work in about 15 minutes, if not they could give me a second dose, if neither worked I would be on my way to Spokane, but they were not going to check my cervix anymore (which was fine with me).
She gave me the shot after 45 minutes it finally started to work and the pain started to go away. The medication made my body shake all over and my teeth chatter which she said was a very common side effect. After several hours without contractions they finally unhooked me from the monitors and gave me medication to help me sleep. Later that morning she gave me the second dose of Procardia. I was able to sleep from 5:30am until around 9:30 when Dr. Urquhart (who had been on call) came in to do his rounds. He explained that it was unclear exactly what was going on and what could be causing the contractions since there are so many factors that put me at high risk. He decided to not keep me on any medications at home since there was not clear sign of the cause and left that up for Dr. Berg to decide since she was more familiar with me and my pregnancy.
We will be following up with Dr. Berg tomorrow and we will be going over the results of my labs from last week, which were abnormal (I got a call from the nurse Thursday and she informed me that there had been some protein in my urine) and discuss the events of my recent non-stress test. Good news, the babies look great! All the non-stress tests that were preformed during my little escapade were great. It’s just my body that is having difficulty tolerating pregnancy.