One Last Hurdle...

As someone whose job it is day in and day out to boil incredibly complex tasks into a set of accomplishable and quantfiable milestones this is the part that gets hard, at least for me.

Harper is doing so incredibly well, much much better then expected. She's out of the incubator as now she can consistently maintain her own temperature, she had that pesky IV removed that was pumping in extra calories to beef her up, and she's gaining weight like crazy and is up to 4 lbs 8 ounces and is packing them on every day. Her last hurdle is learning how to eat. I know what you're thinking, she has Blake's genes, this won't be hard at all. If you've ever witnessed me with a bowl of queso in front of me then you know what I mean. But unfortunately it's just not that easy.

Part of me wants an action plan in place to help her figure this out. I'd love it if they'd tell Beth and I to be there every 3 hours for each feeding, give us specific instructions how and when to feed her, and put her on a training regimen of so many pacifier sucks per hour, so many tries of attempting to take a bottle, etc... but.... this is not God's design. God created this thing called eating and has enabled each of his children to learn how to do so on their own (some more then others). The nurses keep telling us this is so natural, that technically Harper should still be inside Mom's belly, and that one day she'll just figure it out on her own without any in depth training regimen implemented by Dad.

I think this is probably an important lesson in fatherhood that God felt important to drill into me from the start, knowing my personality. In that I mean that there will be lots of things that I can control and "fix" for my child but many more things that I won't. It's in these situations that I'm learning how to be a good Dad. For now it's just walking along side of her so she knows that while it's on her to figure this out that I will forever and always be by her side routing her on as she does.

All in all, we are so incredibly blessed with her progress so far. We are surrounded by these incredible babies in the fight for their lives, some constantly crying, others with alarms on their machines constantly going off, and there is our little fighter right in the middle of it just flourishing who barely even lets out a peep despite the regular poking and prodding of loving nurses and doctors. We will all learn so much from this little girl's fighting spirit.

There have been so many highlights so far. The "kangaroo time" will be something Beth and I cherish for life. This is the process I explained in my last post where we hold her skin to skin against our chest for hours. She absolutely loves it, just nestles right in and conks out for hours. It's a very magical time and I think probably as important for Beth and I as it is for her development. Also, we've been blown away by the nursing staff at Northwestern. The profession of nursing has risen several notches in my eyes through this experience and in my humble opinion should be regarded as highly as a police officer, a firefighter, a teacher, or a soldier. There are a few nurses in particular that, if this is possible, love our little girl just as much as we do and take such wonderful care for her. One of our favorite nurses got real teary with us when she was going to be off for a few days cause she was going to miss Harper so much. She even called up multiple times on her day off just to check on her. While nothing can fully take away the incredible awfulness of leaving your child at the hospital at 10:00 at night to go home to sleep, these incredible nurses make that just a tad bit easier knowing the care they are showing our daughter.

So that's it for now, we're down to this last hurdle of eating. This could take 4 weeks or 4 days for her to figure out but when she does then she'll get to come home. Our prayer this week is for Harper's development so she can learn how to eat and for our strength to be patient and trusting of God's timing throughout this process. Thanks all for the support during this time, we appreciate it more then words can express.