The door bell rang and Gillian hurried to answer it. She was feeling harried, the house was a mess, Owen had only just quit crying, Cal was at work and Lewis at day care and she was alone and feeling a little overwhelmed. Owen was a good baby. He slept through the night and he fed just fine now and he really didn't cause too many problems except for when he stopped breathing and that just scared the shit out of everyone around him. They were all tense and over tired and unsettled. Owen seemed fine though. Even coming out of a spell of apnoea he didn't seem fazed.

"Hi," Gillian answered the door a little breathlessly. She realised she'd left the baby monitor in the kitchen and that if Owen stopped breathing right now she probably wouldn't be able to hear the alarm of his monitor. "Come in," she gestured to Heather quickly.

"How's he been?" She asked warmly. Not 'how are you' but 'how is the baby?'

"A lot of crying," Gillian sighed as they headed down to the living room.

"Something wrong?"

"I don't think so. I think he's just in that phase."

"How have his feeds been?" Heather headed straight for where Owen was lying on the ground, on his back, beneath an activity centre, bringing his feet up to kick the swinging brightly decorated plastic shapes. She knelt in front of him, making a mock surprised face and cooing gently in greeting and wiggling a hand over his torso.

"He's been good," Gillian informed the physical therapist. Heather had been coming to see them twice a week for the last month or so, around the time Owen stopped sleeping all the time and was more aware during the days. Gillian sat down next to her son while Heather moved the activity centre away. He gave her a smile, though Gillian wasn't sure they still weren't involuntary at this stage. She had a million shots of him smiling already. Owen grabbed his own foot and his eyes slid to the centre so they were crossed. He couldn't help it and it was disturbing to watch.

"His dexterity is getting better."

"Cal and I do the exercises with him. Or sometimes Lewis," Gillian revealed.

"That's nice, to get Lewis involved," Heather noted. Gillian watched as the other woman leaned over the baby and said hello and gently took his hands in hers; he gripped her thumbs. "Is he getting 'tummy time'?"

"Not much," Gillian admitted. "I worry that his lungs won't be able to expand properly."

"Sure," Heather agreed but most of her attention was on Owen. "We're going to start with some leg movement," her voice changed as she explained to the baby what was going to happen. "And then some tummy time."

Gillian watched on, fighting down that urge to tell the other woman to back off. Cal teased her about it, that feral mother instinct, as he called it, but there were also occasions when he admitted he felt an insane urge to rip someone's throat out if it looked like they were going to hurt one of the boys.

Heather showed Gillian a new exercise for Owen's legs, to strengthen his muscles and to encourage him to use them and to help the wiring of his brain properly. While Heather worked Owens' chubby legs she asked about his apnoea. It was the number one topic of conversation with almost all of his doctors; aside from the hearing and sight specialists. At the end of the week Gillian uploaded the monitor's readings to yet another specialist clinic, who read through the data. They could tell which alarms were real and which were merely loose cord triggers. The length of the apnoea and bradycardia spells was analysed and how low Owen's heart rate had fallen to. Then they'd call and Gillian would have to go over each episode and discuss when the alarm happened, what Owen was doing at the time, what someone had to do to get him breathing again. Reliving those moments made Gillian feel uneasy, like if she paid too much attention to them they would garner more energy and multiply. All that information was then sent to Owen's doctor at the clinic. Last week there had been fifteen. This week just ten.

"He's making improvement," Heather noted.

"Yeah," Gillian agreed. And he was. He really was. He was doing great considering everything that could have gone wrong. They had gotten off lightly with his premature birth really.

"In a few years you won't even remember he had a few problems at all."

Now that sounded very optimistic.

"You'll be just like all the other boys and girls your age," Heather cooed at Owen. He returned a gummy grin and waved his arms and Gillian hoped that was true. "Has he rolled over yet?"

"No," Gillian admitted and wondered if she should feel disappointed. She could hear Cal telling her she shouldn't be. Babies didn't follow time tables and schedules or books and with Owen it was going to be doubly interesting and hard to predict because his developmental age was to be taken from his due date, not his birth date. Didn't mean Gillian didn't hate having to say no, her son wasn't rolling over or holding up his head on his own yet, or don't worry, the crossed thing is normal, even if it looks incredibly bizarre... his eyes will go back to normal on their own... When Heather turned Owen over to his belly, he just lay there like a turtle flailing around on its back, except he was on his front. Of one thing Gillian was sure, when it came to her kids, she was more insecure than she had ever felt in her life.