24 Weeks...Viability Day!

Hooray, today marks the official Viability Day for the babies!  This means that if they were born today, the would have a chance of surviving.  Technically, babies have survived born even earlier than this, but my understanding is that at 24 weeks, the medical community considers the chances of survival to be great enough to warrant resuscitation and other intensive care measures to keep the babies alive.

Obviously, just because the babies could survive at this this point, doesn't mean there is a good chance of it (still less than 50% survival rate), and there is a high chance that even if they did survive, they would have lifelong health problems or disabilities due to premature birth.  So I plan to keep baking them another 3 months or so if my body will let me.  But it is nice to have that reassurance that we have passed the 24 week mark.  Over the next few weeks, the babies' chances of survival increase by about 2-3% per day, so we are in a very critical period of growth and development.

I am still feeling much improved from several days ago, when Baby A's head was putting pressure on my cervix and bladder.  Now my only real problems are caused by my increased size.  My skin already feels so stretched out, I don't even want to think about how I'll feel in a couple more months!  I'm noticing my size more as it gets harder and harder to bend over, turn over in bed, etc.  I have only gained 19 pounds so far, but I'm pretty sure almost all of it is in my midsection.  Other than that though, I feel really good!  Here is my 24 week belly shot.  As you can see, I've really popped out over the last 4 weeks:

In other news, I got word from my IPs yesterday that our parentage paperwork is close to being finalized!  The state of Missouri does not have any set laws regarding surrogacy, so how judges deal with the parentage paperwork varies from county to county and judge to judge.  Apparently the county I live in is our attorney's favorite for filing parentage paperwork because the judge who handles the cases is so efficient and accommodating.  In most cases, we would normally file our papers before the babies are born and the judge would sign once he receives notification of their birth.  However, this particular judge requests that we hold off on even filing the paperwork until the babies are born.  That way he can look everything over and sign on the same day.  Our attorney says that since the judge has been so quick to get the paperwork signed in the past, she makes sure to accommodate his requests.  So, once our papers are done the attorney will just hang onto them until delivery day!