I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only child to obsessively ask this question on long car journeys enroute to various camp sites in France or cottages in the cotswolds. And I’m pretty sure my parents weren’t the only ones to repeatedly lie to me by always replying with “oh yes, very nearly there”, regardless of whether the question was asked as we were pulling out of our driveway at home or 7 hours into a 14 hour ferry crossing! No matter how many times I asked the question and no matter how many times I got the same answer back, the reality was that no amount of eye spy, singalongs to tapes of the soundtrack from oklahoma nor boiled sweets, was anywhere near entertaining enough to distract me from the excitement of getting to our final destination.  And so, here we are in the hospital, seemingly endlessly asking the question “are we nearly there yet” and never quite getting a staright answer and knowing when the excitement of coming home with Savannah will finally happen.

The good news on this front is that SJ continues to behave well and is on a reasonably low amount of oxygen and gradually imoroving at breast feeding at her usual steady pace. There has even been talk of a “discharge meeting” happening sometime in the not too distant future.  This is the hospital equivalent of a parole board meeting to see if the patient/prisoner has behaved well enough to be considered for release and what steps need to be taken in order to prepare them for life on the outside.  At the moment,  there’s only talk of this meeting taking place but the mere mention of it on the horizon is music to our ears and more exciting than any final car journey destination.

So whilst there’s no firm departure date in the diary yet, Roz has mentioned on more than one occasion and to more than a few members of the medical team, how nice it would be to have Savannah home for her birthday on 6th March.  And just like my repeatedly asking the question “are we nearly there yet?”, Roz’s continued reminders of her birthday are greated with the same positive, yet ambiguous response each time. …usually along the lines of “oh yes, we can certainly try”.  As ever in hospitaland tho, we know better than to get our hopes up and haven’t strung the “welcome home” banner up just yet.

Still,  there’s a definite feeling of SJ’s eventual discharge becoming an immiment reality now, rather than just a vague notion of something that might happen one day in the future. And as she continues to get stronger, bigger and better at feeding and breathing every day (we’re on day 113 today for anyone still counting!), we’re hoping for  a March homecoming but we’ll have to wait and see!