Douglas “Ridge” Watts was born on 11 August 2025 in Mobile, Alabama, to Annsley Salter and Bailey Watts of Burnt Corn / Evergreen. Within days his skin blistered. He was flown to UAB in Birmingham and diagnosed with junctional epidermolysis bullosa (JEB), a rare genetic failure of the proteins — in his case described as missing laminin-332 and related anchors — that hold the layers of skin together. Families call these infants butterfly babies: friction that would not mark another child opens wounds. Bathing, a nappy change, a kiss can tear the surface. Dressing the blisters can take hours. There is no cure. Severe JEB also scars mucosa; the airway, mouth and gut are at risk. Infection, including MRSA around the eye in Ridge’s early months, is constant work. Public posts from his parents and a GoFundMe organised by family friends described a baby who smiled easily and rarely cried, and specialists in dermatology, ENT, GI and speech at UAB. An experimental path was discussed; cost was not covered. Doctors had spoken to the family in terms of months, not years.

The text you sent says that two days after his eight-month mark he stopped breathing, that teams worked for 27 minutes, and that he died. I did not find a published obituary that independently records those minutes. Severe junctional EB does kill in infancy, often through airway compromise, sepsis or the exhaustion of skin that will not hold. If that morning is how his life ended, it fits the medicine even if the stopwatch stays with the people who were in the room.

Eight months of bandage changes is not a metaphor. It is a mother and father wrapping a child whose skin was never built for this world, and a community that tried to buy time. What remains is the diagnosis — JEB, laminin-332, Alabama — and a family that already told neighbours who he was: a quiet boy with a smile, for as long as the skin allowed.

Sources: GoFundMe “Support Ridge Watts: Help a Butterfly Baby”; local Alabama posts by Rick Karle and The Mark White Show quoting Annsley Salter and Bailey Watts; standard clinical descriptions of junctional epidermolysis bullosa (incidence, laminin-332, infant mortality risk).