Were they officially unresponsive, or were they just sleeping very deeply?
The first term 'Unresponsive' suggests that tests were done on them to ascertain this.
I am not aware of any tests being done. Are you ?
Where does the term 'unresponsive' as applied to the twins originate?
In spite of the noise and lights and general pandemonium, they hadn’t stirred. They’d always been sound sleepers, but this seemed unnatural. Scared for them, too, I placed the palms of my hands on their backs to check for chest
movement, basically, for some sign of life. [Madeleine]
The children's mother thought it seemed unnatural that
the twins didn't respond to noise, lights and pandemonium. So unnatural that she checked for signs of life. You check for signs of life only if you think someone may have died, so Kate thought it possible that her children were dead in their cots.
She found that they were breathing though, so did nothing further except wonder if they had been sedated. If they had been, the drug was unknown and the dosage was unknown. The fact that the children were breathing at that moment didn't mean they would be breathing when she next checked them.