Birthday 2 of 3

One thing that's odd about having a super-duper-extra-tiny-micropreemie is that I anticipate having people ask "how old is he?" and me not knowing exactly what to say. As of today, Woody's officially term, but he's also 119 days old, just shy of four months, so what way to address the issue? One way to think of it is to consider his term day his second birthday, so that if it's just some random schmoe asking about his developmental age, I can reference his age relative to the sixth of September.

Of course, a kid is going to love having an extra birthday to kick around, especially if we make anything resembling a big deal of it. But in terms of personal meaningfulness, there is a third 'birthday' or something like it that is, if not looming, at least is ever-present in our thoughts. When we bring him home after this long and arduous ordeal, we will have a real event to celebrate, and I imagine that it will be another birthday-like thing for at least a few years after. But maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself yet.

Woody's continuing to do very well. He got turned down to 1 on his high-flow cannula today, and may go to low-flow as early as later this week. His eye exam showed a couple of spots of stage 3 ROP, for the first time, but there's no "plus disease" or any of the factors that call for immediate surgery, so he's still dodging that bullet for the time being.

I had a delightful conversation this afternoon with a pulmonologist, who was a key perpetrator of the ugly intervention session in early August. Faithful Woodyholics will recall that is where two doctors and an NP sat us down in a conference room, made Maggie and Grandma Stiffler cry, and told us that he wasn't going to be able to handle another extubation attempt and that we should just face facts and prepare for the trach. This doctor cheerfully ate crow, declaring that sometimes babies can just totally fool him, and that Woody didn't even sound like the same baby now. "I love being wrong, when they turn out like this." My only regret was that Maggie wasn't there to hear him say it.

All remains well, and we are still very happy with how he's doing.