From me:
Thank you SO SO much for your thoughts and prayers everyone! I've passed along each message (including emails) to my sweet friend and she is truly humbled that perfect strangers would pray for her family.

Now an abbreviated version of the update from my friend. The baby hasn't been named yet because they hadn't agreed on a name before all this happened and well, mommy hasn't been awake this whole time!:

UPDATE: Mon, 7/9/07

It is truly a miracle to witness the amazing and continued recovery, both for [sister's name] and my little niece. From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU for all of your prayers, support and concern!!! You will never know this side of eternity how much your intervention has helped.

This weekend, [sister's name] continued to progress in an astounding fashion. They successfully removed her ventilator yesterday (Sunday) around noon. Amen!!!! What a blessing, and a true indicator that she has definitely moved forward – leaps and bounds ahead of perhaps many expectations. (That’s the power of prayer!!!!)

What a relief and encouragement to finally have her squeeze our hands, smile, and even open her eyes ever so slightly. She coughs and still grimaces in a lot of pain with tears, but each day, she grows stronger and stronger.

Our little baby girl continues to progress amazingly well too! They are allowing a very small number of people to hold her for an hour at a time, a few times throughout the day. They are excited to watch her progress, and as she continues to integrate bottle feeding, we continue to pray that she can keep her food down.

Again, we cannot thank you enough for your love, support, concern, and prayers! It’s so humbling to walk through the hospital, and have nurses come up with goose bumps of excitement because of the turn of events, both for [sister's name] and our little baby girl. Keep up the intervention, as we are still on the journey!!!