* Joshua's Journey: Thinking back; Tiny Ears

Thinking back to those early days in the NICU. Your purplish skin, your tiny features, the fuzzy white hair that still covered your body. You weren't supposed to be out of the womb yet. I had never known a baby so premature. Sure, it seemed EVERYONE had a friend of a friend or some distant relative who was born early; I got really tired of hearing it. But no one they knew was born quite as early as you. And this early, every day counts! So those well-meaning statements were not comforting; we didn't know what was going to happen to you and everyone's story is different! All we knew was that you had a brain bleed and it was bad. It wasn't only in your ventricles, but it was also in your cerebellum. They chance of you having severe disabilities was very high. It seemed as though nothing would ever be "normal" again. I didn't have much hope of you looking "normal," acting normal, functioning normal, I couldn't even imagine your ears being normal!

When you were born there was no cartilage in your ears. They were perfectly formed with all of the folds, but they were just skin. So that meant if you were laying on your side and your ear got folded, it would stay folded until the nurse or me fixed it. There was no form to your ear. Most of the time that I took pictures I fixed your ear so you would look "normal" but now I wish that I had taken a few more with your folded ears because I don't want to forget even the tiny ways that we saw you grow and change right before our very eyes. Not many people get to experience the miracle of a baby's development. It was scary, but we witnessed a miracle in more ways than one!

Nurses would tell us that the cartilige would harden and they would have form to them after a couple months. I didn't believe them though. I couldn't see it. You also had a HUGE ear lobe in addition to your large ear (compared to the size of your head) You still have a large ear! We've even compared it to your brothers :)