Arwen is off all her monitors for several days now and quite stable.  The only thing keeping her from coming home at this point is that she hasn’t gained weight, she’s still a little smaller than her birth weight.  Once she is home, she will have to go back for open heart surgery some time in the next few months, and cleft palate surgery over the next year or so….I know that people have lots of questions about Arwen.   Why did this happen?  Whose fault is it?  This is a natural response that people have when something upsetting happens, because if it can be somebody’s fault than they figure they can keep themselves safe by doing everything right.  But the fact is, what happened with Arwen is a very subtle thing at a chromosome level that happens randomly before the baby is even created.  It is not connected to anything during the pregnancy, not even correlated to maternal age.  It happens as part of the randomness of the universe.  Gwen and Evan are very into healthy eating.  Gwen ate exceptionally well through her pregnancy.  She is a larger woman, but unlike many women with today’s lifestyles, she never developed gestational diabetes.  I am sure that is because she ate so carefully.  Gwen did develop pregnancy induced hypertension during the later part of her pregnancy.  It did not impact any of the challenges that Arwen deals with.  In fact, current medical understandings assert that this form of hypertension is caused by the hormones of pregnancy.  Again, it is not caused nor cured by diet or body size, unlike other forms of hypertension.  And Gwen was right on top of it.  In fact, she is now the proud owner of a blood pressure monitor.  She never developed the dangerous pre-eclampsia that is the fear with pregnancy induced high blood pressure.  And her blood pressure has returned to normal in the last week or so.  Gwen speculates that if anything sparked her hypertension, it was the alarming results of some of her pregnancy ultrasounds indicating that there may be a hole in the heart of their baby and a small head circumference.  In addition, there was the confusion brought on by mixed messages: Gwen had ten ultrasounds in all.  The results of these ultrasounds were that experts were telling Gwen that there either was no hole in the heart, or that it was so small as to be insignificant.   That the original ultrasound was wrong.  G & E were further explained that the small head might just indicate a small baby.  Other babies in Evan’s family have been very small at full term, so that seemed quite plausable.  At Christmas we were told that the baby was catching up, growing normally, and there was no more need for more ultrasounds.  As it turns out, Arwen was not actually growing at that point, the ultrasound was wrong.  I remember how determined Gwen was to ensure she was getting adequate protein, dairy, etc. in her daily diet according to the food guides.  And this question about the baby’s size made her even more vigilant.  Little did we know that while Gwen was growing from a pregnancy diet, Arwen was  not.  Again, it was not related to anything G & E were doing or not doing or had done.  It was a fluke of nature that happens randomly approximately 1 in every 2,000 births. …Gwen and Evan have been wanting a baby for a long time and have read nearly everything there is to read on pregnancy and childrearing.  They have all the latest videos on parenting.  In anticipation of Arwen they have focused all their disposable income on educational childrens’ toys, books, play equipment, and baby clothing.  So much so that I have complained that they left nothing for any of us to buy for gifts.  Little Arwen is a sweet little baby and it is very sad that she has some suffering and has had to spend so much time in the hospital.  It is wonderful that she has been able to have her parents and grandparents hold her and nurture her through some of this. … I just wanted to talk about all of this because I know about people’s tendency to want to attribute blame when something frightening or sad happens.  It is called "Just World Phenomenon" in the social psychological literature if you want to look it up.  Lay people sometimes refer to it as "victim blame."  …Anyway, Jim and I are home here missing little Arwen and our housemates Gwen and Evan, but enjoying Canberra and the weather and looking forward to Marion’s visit (Evan’s mother).  We have so appreciated all the loving supportive messages that people have sent us.