26 Weeks!!

Praise God! Yesterday was 26 weeks! We feel like we have jumped another hurdle. Our babies now have an 80% chance of survival as opposed to the 50% they had when we walked into the hospital just over two weeks ago. Now we are praying for 27 weeks.

26 Week Photo!

At my sonogram on Wednesday, the ultrasonographer was able to catch a really fun picture of our quads. She has been doing sonograms for more than 30 years and has looked at several sets of quads, but this photo was a first for her. She was so excited, she actually took the photo, left me in the room for a few minutes, and went around to show it to the other ultrasonographers she works with. She was able to get all four heads in one photo! That is incredibly hard to do, especially at this gestational age with all of them smashed up together.



She also drew a picture for me of how the babies are positioned in the womb. I decided to redraw it with a little extra flair for the blog. I should warn you that I have major artistic talent, so don’t get too blown away with how amazing my sketch is. :)  (Click on the picture if you want to make it bigger. Give it a second to load and it should adjust itself to fit your screen size.)



It’s obviously not 100% accurate as the babies are much bigger inside their sacs and they really are squished together. It’s also only a 2 dimensional drawing. Elijah is actually tucked behind Caleb and Abby, so you shouldn’t be able to see his head in my picture. However, I wanted everyone to see his smiling face so I took creative license while drawing it!

*********************************************************************

Now for a little Q and A. These are questions that we have been asked many times, so I figured I would answer them on here as well since others might be wondering the same thing:

You keep talking about Caleb, Abby, Elijah, and Ellie, but are you really talking about the same baby each time?
Each baby is in his or her own sac and they each have their own placenta. Each one of them is attached to part of my uterus just as they have been since they showed up in there. Because they are anchored to different parts of my uterus, the sacs don’t change location even though the babies can roll around within their sacs. The sonograms we’ve had over the past few months have shown us where the babies are inside of me. So when Sean and I talk about a specific baby, we are talking about the same baby each time.

Can you tell which baby is which when they move around?
Yes! I can tell which baby is kicking me based on where I’m feeling the kicks since the location of the sacs never change.

How are they going to know which one is which when they start delivering them?
The doctors know our babies as A, B, C, and D, so when they are delivered, they will be able to keep track of which baby is which based on their location before they pull them out (see the above drawing). The horizontal cesarean section incision will be made so low that Caleb will most likely make his appearance first followed by the others.

Are they identical?
Nope! They came from four separate eggs and are in four separate sacs. There are no twins or triplets in there. They won’t look alike (other than the resemblance that siblings normally have to each other!).

Are you ready for this? I can’t imagine having quadruplets!
Me either! But we are about to start figuring it out! :)

I've found that a lot of people have the same questions, so if you have a specific question that I didn't answer above, you can leave it in the comments. I’ll try to answer some of them in upcoming blog posts (emphasis on “try!”).

--Posted by Becca

Praise God! Yesterday was 26 weeks! We feel like we have jumped another hurdle. Our babies now have an 80% chance of survival as opposed to the 50% they had when we walked into the hospital just over two weeks ago. Now we are praying for 27 weeks.

26 Week Photo!

At my sonogram on Wednesday, the ultrasonographer was able to catch a really fun picture of our quads. She has been doing sonograms for more than 30 years and has looked at several sets of quads, but this photo was a first for her. She was so excited, she actually took the photo, left me in the room for a few minutes, and went around to show it to the other ultrasonographers she works with. She was able to get all four heads in one photo! That is incredibly hard to do, especially at this gestational age with all of them smashed up together.



She also drew a picture for me of how the babies are positioned in the womb. I decided to redraw it with a little extra flair for the blog. I should warn you that I have major artistic talent, so don’t get too blown away with how amazing my sketch is. :)  (Click on the picture if you want to make it bigger. Give it a second to load and it should adjust itself to fit your screen size.)



It’s obviously not 100% accurate as the babies are much bigger inside their sacs and they really are squished together. It’s also only a 2 dimensional drawing. Elijah is actually tucked behind Caleb and Abby, so you shouldn’t be able to see his head in my picture. However, I wanted everyone to see his smiling face so I took creative license while drawing it!

*********************************************************************

Now for a little Q and A. These are questions that we have been asked many times, so I figured I would answer them on here as well since others might be wondering the same thing:

You keep talking about Caleb, Abby, Elijah, and Ellie, but are you really talking about the same baby each time?
Each baby is in his or her own sac and they each have their own placenta. Each one of them is attached to part of my uterus just as they have been since they showed up in there. Because they are anchored to different parts of my uterus, the sacs don’t change location even though the babies can roll around within their sacs. The sonograms we’ve had over the past few months have shown us where the babies are inside of me. So when Sean and I talk about a specific baby, we are talking about the same baby each time.

Can you tell which baby is which when they move around?
Yes! I can tell which baby is kicking me based on where I’m feeling the kicks since the location of the sacs never change.

How are they going to know which one is which when they start delivering them?
The doctors know our babies as A, B, C, and D, so when they are delivered, they will be able to keep track of which baby is which based on their location before they pull them out (see the above drawing). The horizontal cesarean section incision will be made so low that Caleb will most likely make his appearance first followed by the others.

Are they identical?
Nope! They came from four separate eggs and are in four separate sacs. There are no twins or triplets in there. They won’t look alike (other than the resemblance that siblings normally have to each other!).

Are you ready for this? I can’t imagine having quadruplets!
Me either! But we are about to start figuring it out! :)

I've found that a lot of people have the same questions, so if you have a specific question that I didn't answer above, you can leave it in the comments. I’ll try to answer some of them in upcoming blog posts (emphasis on “try!”).

--Posted by Becca