A SPECIAL DELIVERY: QUADRUPLETS ON WAY

OLMSTED, Ill. -- The postmaster in this small community expects a special delivery any day: Her daughter is pregnant with quadruplets.

Postmaster Glenda Sheffer will become the grandmother of four boys, doctors say.

Her daughter, Susan Graham of DuQuoin, was admitted to Jewish Hospital in St. Louis Thursday as a precaution. She is 29 weeks into the pregnancy. Many multiple births take place around week 30. A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks.

"We prayed for kids. We just weren't real specific. We wanted children, just not all at once," Graham said from her hospital room.

On Thursday an ultrasound showed the four babies doing well. The smallest weighed 2 pounds, 4 ounces. The biggest weighed 2 pounds, 12 ounces.

Graham, 25, and her husband, Eric, had trouble conceiving. She was prescribed the lowest dosage of a fertility drug called Clomid. The drug increases the chance of conceiving more than one baby, but usually doctors see twins. This is the first set of quadruplets born to an area couple.

On March 20 Graham first saw her doctor, who thought she heard heartbeats of two babies and perhaps the third heartbeat of the mother.

An ultrasound the next week showed four babies.

The quadruplets have become the talk of Olmsted, where Graham grew up. Sheffer provides lots of pregnancy updates as customers pick up mail at the post office. Several friends have consoled her about the upcoming births. "They say, `Oh, you poor thing.' But that's not the way I look at it. We are thrilled."

Graham jokes about staking a cow in the backyard to supply milk. She thinks the Internal Revenue Service may audit their tax return when the family grows from two to six in a single year.

When the babies are born, they likely will be admitted to Children's Hospital before they go home.

Graham said the magnitude of raising four boys hasn't sunk in yet. Her mother agrees.

Sheffer said, "She's had to concentrate so hard on getting them here. She just knows if she can get them here, she can take care of them."

Sheffer has saved a month's vacation so she can lend a hand with diapering, feeding and bathing.

The family is convinced the babies will be healthy. "From the start, we have felt very positive, and a lot of people have been praying for her," Sheffer said.

Graham said a family of four boys is enough. "I will never be pregnant again," she said.