Viability!!!!

Today we reached a huge benchmark, I am 24 weeks along now.  This has been a much anticipated day because 24 weeks is considered viability. That means if the Mottlets decided to make their grand entrance they would have a chance of survival.  It's not the best odds, 50-70%, but it is better than before. They would not have survived if they were delivered earlier. Now I am able to start letting myself get excited about these babies.

I am still on bed rest, but thankfully my last appointment with Dr. Gonzales showed that my cervix had thickened back up.  You could see some funneling still and it even shifted back and forth some as we watched on the ultrasound monitor.  Even with those shifts, Dr. Gonzales said what I was doing was working and to keep it up.  In other words, NO HOSPITAL ADMISSION! I got to go back home on bed rest.  That was a huge relief. After spending an entire morning at Brookwood between my two appointments, I developed a new appreciation for bed rest.  I was exhausted and hurting! My poor hips, back, and giant belly were begging to just lie down.

My day now look something like this:
-wake up with Donny and eat first breakfast (usually oatmeal Donny heats up for me), check email and Facebook
-go back to sleep
-wake back up and eat second breakfast (stuff from the mini fridge parked by my bed), do my quiet time, then read/watch tv/listen to podcasts/crochet until lunch
-My AMAZING in laws arrive and either deliver lunch from a restaurant or reheat yummy leftovers, eat until I'm stuffed
-let food settle and start getting sleepy again,
-sleep again
-wake up and eat a snack while waiting for Donny to come home
-Hang out with Donny until supper is delivered by a friend on our TakeThemAMeal.com sign up around 5
-visit with the wonderful friend who delivered supper
-eat until I'm stuffed again
- watch tv with Donny
- settle in for bed

It's a lot like a newborn's schedule!  Eat, sleep, eat, sleep.  But honestly it's not bad.  Lying down gives me more time to enjoy the babies movements. They are getting strong! No more flutters, just hard thumps. This past weekend my sister, Faith came and hung out in bed with me.  It was so wonderful to have that time with her.  She lay beside me and kept her hand on my belly as we talked. Her patience was rewarded with some nice strong kicks from Dorothy and Georgie. In fact, Georgie is moving more than ever now that her brother and sisters are not always piled on top of her.

The babies' favorite time to have a dance party is when I'm setting in for a serious nap or bedtime at the end of the day.  As soon as I really relax and start breathing deeply (or as deeply as possible when four babies are displacing all my organs) they all start moving. It starts with one, but quickly escalates to and all out disco with four little dancers "moving and grooving" (as our ultrasound tech likes to say). Donny felt some of that little dance party last night.

So now our new goal is 28 weeks.  That is another month in bed, which seems pretty daunting, but the odds of survival jump to 92%! That's a huge improvement from 50-70%.