8:00 am saturday

Last night as I slept on a couch next to Boothe, I woke to see the nurses feeding Copeland some formula through a small dropper. She started taking a passy last night and did a great job with it, so the neonatologist figured she could try and swallow some food. So at about 3 am last night, our little girl ate about 2CCs of real formula and did not spit it up. The nurses are trying again right now so we will see what happens. It is another thing she is not supposed to be able to do To say that we are overwhelmed would be an understatement. Emotionally we are prepared for certain things and God keeps reminding us that His plan is greater. Our plan is to take her home around lunchtime and go from there - I cannot really put into words what I am experiencing right now, I just feel like I am not in control - which is good but so scary. What I do know is that God is going to continue to use Copleland to impact more people, just like she has me.

Conor

I wanted to add my own words onto this quickly. We are in a state of shock, to some degree, as Conor said... Copeland began to eat last night after we were told, unequivocally, that eating wasn't an option for her. The neonatologist who was on-call last night felt that if she could suck - and the passy we offered her has become her favorite thing - and was also enjoying the sucrose drops, there wasn't a reason we couldn't try to get her to eat a little something. After two syringes full of formula, which is a lot thicker than the sucrose, we are convinced that for now, the Lord has decided things should look a little different than we expected. Taking her home has become much, much less strenuous, and best of all: our precious girl is finally getting the sustenance I think Conor and I both suspected she was longing for. If, in fact, her esophagus wasn't connected to her stomach, the Lord healed that in a matter of days. We are in awe.

We understand that ultimately our little girl still has trisomy-18. God didn't choose to remove or change that diagnosis. But she's going home totally tube-free... no oxygen, no feeding tubes... as "normal" as a baby with her status could ever hope to be. We have no idea what to expect, but we are trying to embrace the facts - again, how we've coped for this long in some ways - while at the same time acknowledging God's incredible ability to suprise us with joy.