Baby Slezak’s Blog

Paul Slezak will participate in his first Easter holiday today. He is doing well, and we are staying until 4pm today so he can have his bilirueben checked again to make sure it is holding steady or dropping, and not raising back up quickly. His reading is currently at 11, well within reasonable range. If all goes well we may be able to take him home for an Easter dinner, but we’ll see.

Mom is still doing very well and gaining more energy by the day. Dad is utterly exhausted after 3 days of sleep depervation and caring for Mom and Paul.

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.

Well,

Just an update to Baby Slezak and Mom. Everything is going to plan, even with the mediocre complications. Pania’s diabetes is under control now, due to her diet and timing of medication. Baby’s size is within nominal ranges, and he is passing all the NST and bio-physical tests. He also dropped last week, and moved into position for birth.

Mom is pretty well fried at this point, but even that is pretty normal for a mother in the seventh month of pregnancy. :-/ She is ready to be done with all of this! She’s ready to resume normal eating habits and be holding her little boy.

Also, in other and important news, we settled on a name for the little guy. Paul Michael Slezak. For a naming process, I’m not sure what conventional is, but I think we were fairly unconventional. We decided on the middle name right out of the gate, and kept playing with first names. We both wanted the first name to be simple to speak, and Pania wanted one that sounded the same or very similar in both English and Indonesian pronunciations. We simply lived with “Paul” for a while until nothing better came along. It is a good name.

I will put up another ultrasound this week and give you another look at him. 7 more weeks to go, and mom is counting the hours.

Daddy’s gone camping this weekend and Mommy’s bored at home by herself. He should keep her accompany, that’s the rule! She’s so nice to keep me warm instead of being outdoors with the cold temperature. Daddy’s crazy, I hope he won’t get sick which can be contagious to mom and then I will end up sick.