33 weeks...and now 3 visits a week

With as many "3's" as we've had popping up on our lives this year Michelle and I both said we wouldn't be surprised if these babies decided to come at 33 weeks. Yesterday was 33 weeks, 3 days and no sign of babies!  We both had moments yesterday where everything kind of hit us. At breakfast, I looked at her giant belly with a sense of awe and just said, "wow! In 18 days we're going to have triplets!" (And was appropriately terrified!). And on our way home from running errands Michelle said, "sometimes it still doesn't feel real to me that I actually have three babies in my belly...I mean, I know I do, but sometimes I still don't believe it!"

We are feeling bummed that we don't have a Danville appointment this week because we're both anxious to find out how big they all are now. Our next visit isn't scheduled until the 7th...bummer dude. That's not to say we don't have appointments this week! With twice weekly non-stress tests and one regular OB visit, we're looking at around five hours a week of baby checking visits. Oy! That'll certainly cut into our productivity!  

We did our first routine non-stress test on Friday. We have to go to labor and delivery at Mt. Nittany hospital to do them because the local OB only has a single monitor.  And because we require two monitors we have to call every time before we plan to go to make sure they have a bed for Michelle and two available monitors. Friday we planned to go at 11:30, but they didn't have a bed so had to go at 2:30 instead. 

In order to "pass" the non-stress test they need 20 minutes of continuous monitoring of each baby. This is no easy task and for a good chunk of the time Friday there were two nurses holding monitors on Michelle's belly.  It took over two hours for all three to pass! This time it was baby C who was being the most difficult and not staying on the monitor at all. Baby B was a little tricky to find,as usual, but once they found her, she was pretty cooperative about staying on. Baby A definitely won the easiest baby award Friday and had already passed before they got B hooked up.  Michelle continues to have low level contractions that show upon the monitor, but that she doesn't feel.

We were quite the celebrities with the nurses! I think five or six different nurses came in just to meet us. They don't see triplet moms very often there. One nurse said she'd worked L&D for 14 years and had only seen one other triplet mom!  Everyone was very nice, which helped, but two hours in one position is no picnic for Michelle, so she is really not looking forward to having to do this twice a week now. But, at the most, it will only be six visits I think, and I'm hoping we can get out of one early next week since we'll have our big ultrasound at Danville on the 7th, but we'll see...