The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is a strange environment to spend one's first days in. Some of the babies are under Bili Rubin lights to combat jaundice. All of them are hooked up to monitors. Some have feeding tubes. Some are in incubators. This is the world that replaces the womb, since for one reason or other they can no longer be in the comforting, liquid darkness inside their mothers. Jen was telling me of a story she heard about a little girl (I think it was a girl...) who had spent the better part of a year in the N.I.C.U. before being sent off to the pediatric ward. The little girl, nearly one year old, had never seen anything but the N.I.C.U., and was very excited to see her new home away from home. It's all relative, I guess. These babies don't know any other world. They just recline in their plastic substitute wombs, waiting unknowingly for the day when they get to move beyond the walls into the world outside the hospital.

Willow is opening her eyes more, but lost an ounce - probably due to all the energy she has to expend to suckle. It's going to be a long month.

cds I listened to while rushing to get back home: Holy Smokes "s/t", Lydia Lunch "Widowspeak", Faraway Brothers "Start the Engine & Drive Away", and The Stalin "Stop Jap + 1 Mushi Go Go" (another bootleg of hard-to-find japanese punk...)

now: Nocturnal Emissions "Mouth of Babes"