Alive Enough, Obama?

Good News from Colorado....

Featherweight preemie finally goes home

BILL REED
THE GAZETTE

Dressed in a fuzzy puppy outfit and emitting tiny squeaks as he nuzzled into his mom, Ricardo Morales-Coronado finally left the hospital on Wednesday.

When he was born on June 23 at 1 pound, 3 ounces at Penrose Community Hospital, Ricardo was not expected to live. But now the smallest baby ever cared for in the Penrose-St. Francis Health Services system is thriving, tipping the scales at more than 5 pounds. A portable oxygen tank is the only reminder of his struggle for life.

The baby - born at only 23 weeks - is not only a pint-size fighter, but he also is a living, breathing symbol of recent advances in intensive newborn care in the Penrose-St. Francis system.

"This is big for us," said Dr. Marya Prado, medical director of the 25-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the new St. Francis Medical Center at Woodmen Road and Powers Boulevard. "I don't want to exaggerate, but I think it's a rite of passage for this NICU.

This is an accomplishment that gives us the confidence to keep moving forward."...

YES. Let's keep moving forward. Let's remind everybody, all the time, how these babies are real, alive, human, and VIABLE!!! In or out of the womb, at any stage of development. Viable because they ARE. ALIVE. HUMAN.