Well, we had a wonderful first Christmas with Mckinley...and New Year's. I thought this process would drag out very slowly but I can't believe how fast it's going by. On Christmas morning they weighed her and for the first time she was above her birth weight. We said she was just trying to give us a Christmas gift, and we loved it! Now as I'm writing this she is all the way up to 2lbs 6 oz! Overall she's been doing well. They did have to give her a second round of treatment for her heart murmur and they said they can't hear it anymore but we are waiting until Monday to hear back from the cardiologist to find out for sure if it's closed up.

It's been amazing to us that even though Mckinley was born so early, she is so perfectly formed. Everything is just extra tiny. But it's also amazing that she already has a little personality. Well, even though she's little I don't think anyone would call her personality little. We've had a lot of different nurses and even nurses that aren't assigned to her tell us the same thing. They use different words but they are all similar...stubborn, scrappy, fiery, fireball etc. We see it so clearly in her as well, and it makes me laugh. As you can see in the picture she does NOT like all the tubes and wires connected to her. So she found a solution...just pull them out. She has even pulled out the feeding tube that goes all the way into her stomach. The breathing tubes took her a couple days to figure out. She started to pull on the tape on her cheek, but didn't have the strength to pull the tape off. So she eventually learned that she could get them out by pulling directly on the part in her nose. The nurses used every tape they could use on her and put it on in every way they usually do, but eventually had to start inventing new ways to put the tape on because she kept figuring it out. She's stubborn as she can be, and they are just hoping her strength doesn't catch up with her will at least until she doesn't need all of that anymore.

But we thank God that she is like that. The nurses keep saying just wait until she is two or three years old, or even worse...a teenager, but we just love it. That girl is a fighter, and while that may be hard when she is older and strong-willed, I know that God made her like that so she could not only fight through this, but eventually use that for His glory. I knew she was doing well and was fighting hard, but I don't think I knew how well she was doing until I went to my doctor this week. He was talking about the precautions I would need to take during my next pregnancy because in his mind this was "worst case scenario". He said that we couldn't even say...well at least if I can make it to 26 weeks again...because he said that he would never expect another baby to do as great as she was doing. He said it was a pretty rare case. He came to visit her the day before and was shocked to see and hear how well she was doing. We are just so thankful. If she was even a couple weeks earlier she wouldn't have had a chance, but God brought her just far enough along and gave her that strong will so that she could survive and start having her testimony shared and already start telling of the power of God. She's one amazing, scrappy little girl with already such an amazing story. Praise God.

They warned us that in the NICU it's a roller coaster ride with lots of ups and downs. So we thought we were prepared for that. It turns out the down days are harder than we thought. Mckinley has had several down days in a row now and it's just so hard to see her go through all this. With down days come lots of extra tests and pokes and IV's and we have to watch her struggle to breathe. I've always heard parents say that it's hard to watch your child go through something hard and not be able to do anything, but I never had any idea how strongly I would feel that until now. She started off doing very well with breathing, but in the past few days she's had a harder time. They have had to give her more help to stimulate her lungs. And when she doesn't breathe well it makes her heart rate drop and sometimes she forgets to breathe and they have to reach in there and move her around so she will remember. Also, when she has bad days we don't get to hold her and that breaks our heart also.

But we are just so thankful that God sees her every breath, every heartbeat, and that He watches over her when we can't. It's teaching me a good lesson in life about worrying. Every time I start to worry I just turn that worry into a prayer. Me thinking about it and wondering about the future doesn't help me or Mckinley. It just makes me upset and dwell on the bad even more, but when I turn it into a prayer I feel God's peace because I know He's taking much better care of her than I ever could. In a situation as hard and scary as this it makes me thankful that I have no control and that God has all control.

Specific prayer requests right now would be:
-That her breathing and lung function would improve.
-She has a heart murmur and they have given her one round of medication but believe it has opened back up. If it has opened back up they can do up to two more rounds of the medication, but if that doesn't work she will have to go to Atlanta for surgery. We are really praying against that.
-That she would continue to gain weight and grow stronger so that things like breathing aren't so hard for her.

A praise is that they did a cranial ultras0und and that she doesn't have any bleeding on her brain which can be common in preemies.

Also, we are looking forward to spending her first Christmas with her. We are going to the hospital first thing on Christmas morning and giving her a baby Bible, a cross to go in her incubator with her, and a little stuffed animal that can stay in there with her also. The Hawk's gave her the Christmas story for children and hopefully we can hold her and read that to her. So we have a lot to pray about and a lot to look forward to with her. Thank you for your continued prayers. We've been in awe of how many people God has sent to pray for her. My dad has even gotten e-mails from prayer chains in Pennsylvania and knows someone praying in Vienna, Austria. What a blessing to have so many lifting her up in prayer.

Mckinley Faith is a true testimony of God's power and love for us. I have put together this page probably more for myself than anyone else. She is on my heart and mind constantly and this gives me a way to put all those thoughts together and share about her when I can't be with her. But feel free to check in to see how she is doing. Here is her story so far...Her middle name is from the phrase God gave me before I was even pregnant. And then after the miscarriage when I didn't know how to keep having faith God gave me the verse Matthew 17:20 “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible. ” A mustard seed is "the smallest seed you can put into the ground" so I figured I could at least have that much. It gave me the strength and hope to keep going with our treatments. Then a name we loved for a girl was Mckinley and I never put together this verse of moving a mountain with your faith and the fact that Mckinley is a mountain until the day of our ultrasound to find out the sex of the baby. God kind of put all that together in my head and I knew that that was His name for her. I loved it :) So the testimony of her name is that even the smallest amount of faith can move mountains.

I believe God has a great plan for her life as she has already overcome so much. Early on in the pregnancy the doctors realized I had a hemorrhage in my uterus. They put me on bed rest and the hope was that she would be able to survive in there even with the hemorrhage. Weeks and weeks went by and on a routine visit to the doctors office I began to lose large amounts of blood. Even the doctor thought the worst. They immediately did an ultrasound only to find that the hemorrhage was gone and my precious daughter was in there just kicking around like nothing was going on. During all of this...our faith in the Lord continued to grow.

I fell more in love with her everyday and I really was enjoying being pregnant. There is nothing like the feeling of your child moving around inside of you. Bringing a new life in this world is something that only God could have created. It's so beautiful. Then on Saturday, December 12 Brandon and I had been out all day Christmas shopping and were putting up shelves in her closet when I noticed a very tiny amount of blood. I'm not a big worrier but I decided just to be safe to call the doctor. He seemed like it was probably no big deal but to meet him at the Medical Center to double check. When we got there, there just so happened to be a specialist in high risk pregnancies there. He is one of the best and God just had him there on a Saturday night which all the nurses were saying never happens. But he and Dr. Simpson did an ultrasound and when they finished they looked at us and said that I was in labor and 3 cm dilated. She was on her way at only 26 weeks. Before it could even register what was going on, they had me hooked up to all kinds of stuff to keep her from coming and got me on steroids immediately. They were originally hoping I would be in the hospital two weeks, then they said hopefully a week, but within 24 hours there was no holding her in, she was coming. Labor hit very quickly and they said it would be better for Mckinley if I had a c-section and when they took me in she was so close to coming that they had to put me under and get her out fast. She was born on December 13 at 4:07 pm 2 lbs. 1 oz. 13 and half inches long. I was sent to recovery and she was sent to the high risk nursery.

I got to meet my daughter the next morning at around 5:00 and she is the most precious, most beautiful baby I've ever seen. I know all parents think that, but she is just amazing. I stayed in the hospital a few more days and went home on Thursday. That was the hardest thing we have ever had to do in our lives. It just doesn't feel right to have a child and leave them in a building while we go home. But they are taking great care of her and the nurses there...well I call them our heroes. What they do day to day is no normal job. They are keeping my 2 pound baby safe, healthy and they love her as well. They are so sweet to her and bend over backwards to make sure we get every moment we can with her. She continues to do well and we get to "kangaroo" with her everyday now. That is a way of holding her where she is skin to skin with one of us. They say preemies that do this come home more quickly than preemies that don't. It helps their heart rate, breathing and many other things. And we absolutely love it. So I will continue to post as she grows and develops.

And I don't want to leave without saying how amazing Mckinley's daddy is. Brandon has been a rock as he stood by me going through every step of this. And you should see how he loves her. It is beautiful and I never could have made it through this without him. She is a blessed girl to have him as a daddy...and I am one blessed wife. God has been so good to us and we are so thankful for the two best Christmas gifts we could have ever gotten...the birth of our Savior and the birth of our daughter.