Day 27, Evening

No big changes today, but Hannah is still going strong and tonight marks her 4-week birthday. Yet she still has two months to go before her original delivery date of mid-October.

Interestingly, all of the normally hidden development she would have undergone in the womb, described on various week-by-week web sites, is now visible to us in our daily visits. I noticed today that her ears are no longer smushed against her head . . . they are almost perfectly formed miniature ears. And they work, too, since we can see her respond to our voices as we calm her down when she over-exerts or ask her to breathe deep when her blood oxygen reading dips low.

Hannah's four-week birthday present was her first kiss on the forehead from Mom. It had not occurred to us that it was safe to do that, and with the plastic cover on the isolette and complex choreography involved in moving her to/from Carla's arms, there really aren't many opportunities to do so anyway. But tonight the nurse happened to ask Carla if she wanted to kiss Hannah goodnight before she lowered the isolette lid, and so we had a little magic moment to mark this modest milestone on Hannah's road home.