After a handful of steady days of a steady plan (and slow but steady progress), we hit a hiccup with Wilson’s feeding that started Saturday overnight and definitely carried over through last night and this (Monday #3) morning.

As you might imagine, any sort of setback at this point is pretty frustrating because we NEED that steady progress to happen in order to go home, so B and I hit the ground running this morning with the attitude of “What can we do to turn this around (and no offense to the nice folks of Children’s, but…) to get the heck out of here?!” Thankfully some of those nice folks are very much on the same wavelength as us and so a new approach was hatched.

Starting tonight we will not be sleeping at the Rainbow House. Instead, we’ll be here in the room with Wilson for the next 48 hours, breastfeeding around the clock (instead of the bottle feeds that had been happening overnight) in hopes that that is what it takes to get enough in her system so we can meet those benchmarks that actually get us out the door. So, essentially, we are going to do a normal newborn schedule in the most not-normal environment and pray that it works (and works well)!

Hence the feather. 

Confused? Let me do my best to explain…

Remember the Tembo post and Wilson’s animal connection to the elephant? But also how she had previously been tagged as a bird because of all the feathers I saw during pregnancy?

After I shared that post, a friend wrote to me about the symbiotic relationship between elephants and birds which I had forgotten about until she brought it up, but as soon as she did, my brain instantly clicked to the thought: allllllll of those feathers I saw were still signs, just not for the baby, but for her helpers (Still with me? I promise, this does all make sense). Remember in Dumbo how he uses the feather to boost his confidence enough to “fly” for the circus act? That feather was his helper and all of you have been Willa’s (as well as our) feathers in the last three weeks, helping us navigate as best we could through our family’s biggest time of challenge and need.

Seriously. We could not have made it this far without your love, prayers, messages, meals, rides, letters, gifts, and all the other goodness you have sent our way.

And now we are calling on our feather-helpers for what we hope is one last big push to get over the hump with feeding so we can go home to do actual newborn things in an actual normal environment because that would truly be the greatest blessing of all. Please keep those hearts and prayers lifted, your fingers and toes crossed, and all the good vibes coming because our Little Miss is so, so ready to fly.