Support the Willis Family's NICU Journey

Hello we are the Willis family and we are creating a go fund me because our newest tiny human is currently in the NICU and has been for the past 2 weeks since birth.

After a beautiful delivery on March 4th at 1:13pm of our sweet Alaina, within minutes, nurses started to notice her oxygen drop. She was taken to the NICU for further evaluation only to find that she wasn’t breathing well on her own due to her lungs not being fully developed. Alaina was put on a cpap machine to keep her comfortable to give her lungs time to develop. This was scary for us because at one point in time doctors mentioned a ventilator due to her stats periodically dropping. A few days later things started heading in a better direction and they started to slowly lower the oxygen. Finally after a lot of progress our sweet girl was put on a cannula and taken off of cpap. A day or 2 later she was oxygen free and doing amazing on her own. We are so proud of her.

This past week she started to take small amounts from a bottle instead of just the feeding tube. Eventually doctors decided since she was doing so good they wanted to let her eat how much she wanted when she wanted but the more she would take the more the nurses started to notice coughing during feedings. A swollow test was recommended and we just learned today that our little Alaina has been aspirating her bottles which means milk is going into her airways and entering her lungs.

After speaking to her care team at Christiana hospital they’ve decided it’s best for Alaina to take all bottles by feeding tube only and to be transferred to Nemours AI DuPont for further testing and evaluation on why. It was also mentioned that she seems to have a low tone which we don’t quite understand yet. We were told that her transfer won’t be happening until next week as arrangements need to be made and a bed has to become available.

With that said we are asking you to help us raise funds to cover the cost of traveling (1hr and 30mins away), food for our other 3 littles while we are on the go, and to help alleviate some financial stress when it comes to bills due to missed work. We’ve been trying to visit and deliver breast milk on days possible once the kids are out of school and my husband is off of work. However with the upcoming transfer we’d like to be by her side and meet her next care team. We don’t normally ask for help but in this situation alittle goes a long way and anything will be greatly appreciated as our focus will be able to be on Alaina and our other kids as they have yet to meet their baby sister. Thank you for taking the time to read and if you can’t donate please say a prayer for our baby girl and share our story, again thank you!

The Willis family