Baby Slezak’s Blog

Well, today we are still well and still in the hospital. This morning Paul’s biliruben count was 14, which is completely managable but in the high average range. They are cautious because the count rasied quickly over last night and early this morning, so they want to keep him another night to make sure it peaks out here and doesn’t get any higher. He’ll get the lamp treatment, and we may end up supplementing his food intake to make sure he’s getting enough.

In short, biliruben (red blood cells) are broken down in two major ways. 1. Being in light 2. Eating and drinking plenty and excreating it naturaly. We’ll make sure he gets both and he should be good to go. In the meantime we have to try and sleep as much as possible. Pania’s blood pressure was 150s/100s this morning, but then 126/86 immediately after laying on her side and napping two hours later. It has done that for two days now, so we’ll see how that goes and if the doc will release her today or not. Either way we’ll stay here another night so she can continue feeding Paul, and we can stay close to him. He is a unbelievable joy in our lives, even when he is mad at us.

We’ve been spending time with him and caring for him.  I finally got a couple pictures with his hat off to show off his full head of black hair.

I was a little slow putting up this post because I’ve been updating twitter regularly, but:

Paul was born on April 8, 2009 at 3:57 pm. He weighed 7 lbs 11 oz (3.4 kilograms) and was 20.5 inches (52.07 cm). Keep watching the Picasa album below for picture updates, and Twitter for status updates.

I also want to thank everyone for their prayers and congratulations. The support from e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter has been overwhelming, and I’m grateful for knowing we are supported from afar. Thank you so much.

This evening we went into the hospital to begin Pania’s labor inducement. We checked in around 4:45 pm, went through the paperwork, standard tests, and ate dinner. (Not a bad dinner for hospital food.) We are now waiting until 8 pm, when they will administer Cervidil. That induces some women into labor, so it could begin as early as tonight sometime, depending on how far along Pania already is. There are some indications that she has begun early labor already.

It should be a long night.