Remarkably Uninteresting

I never kept a social calendar before Nyana came home. I was never so important that I had so much going on that I couldn’t keep up in my head. Amazing Race, Sunday night; lunch with Gran & Bubs, Saturday after next. Easy. But now that she’s home and the Sunshine Brigade has a fan club out in the community, I need a calendar to keep track of all of her social engagements. We average one or two events blocked off per week, and whether it’s a visit to the pediatrician or a home visit from the occupational therapist or a playdate with friends, the common thread through all the various meetings we have is how remarkably well Nyana is doing.

It was Julie, one of our home nurses, who first commented that if you didn’t know any better—aside from Mr BiPAP, of course— you’d never know Ny was a preemie. Her adjusted age is now just over six months, and she’s doing almost everything you’d expect any six month old baby to be doing. Fine motor skills, gross motor skills, communication skills, problem solving… all on track with other six month old babes. She’s eating, she’s pooping, she’s sleeping, she’s growing. No one who sees her has any concerns about her whatsoever. From a medical perspective, while still nowhere near perfectly healthy, Nyana is quite… uninteresting.

Uninteresting is awesome, don’t get me wrong—how many months we longed to just be uninteresting again—but it’s also a bit surreal to think that that chapter of our lives is behind us. We’re not the couple with the sick baby anymore. We don’t have a 45-minute trek across the city every day to see our two-pound baby anymore. We don’t carry the uncertainty of the NICU around with us anymore, and we don’t need to draw strength from Nyana’s Army just to continue putting one foot infront of the other anymore. We don’t have the interesting story to share with our readers anymore; in short, we are quite uninteresting. Which is awesome, as stated, and also quite remarkable in its own right.

To think that Nyana could be so uninteresting so soon after her rocky start is remarkable. To think that she spent almost three months tied to a ventilator and seven months in a hospital bed yet she is doing so well is remarkable. To watch her continually meet and exceed her developmental milestones is beyond remarkable. And to think that we get to move forward from here, deemed uninteresting, is the most remarkable of all.