Erik Rutins
Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000 From: Vermont, USA Status: offline
|
Thank you everyone! A little explanation as to why this has taken so long to post is in order. First, everything is going fine now and we're up to more like 4-5 hours of sleep per night now. Alexander Rutins was born at 5:00pm on August 11, 2006; he weighed 7 lbs, 2.2 oz and was 19 inches long. Now he's six weeks old and is growing well and eating like a maniac. He had a bit of a rough start, though: on the way into the world, he got knocked out cold. The doctors revived him, but he continued to have a bit of trouble and was sent via helicopter to a hospital with a proper neonatal ICU where he could be better monitored and treated. The long and short of it is that due to a rapid descent, he had had some bleeding in the brain -- his head had to compress and uncompress faster than was good for him, which burst some blood vessels. This is apparently a freak occurrence and rare enough that our doctor had yet to see it in her career. Luckily, infants have great powers of recovery because their brains are still developing even up to three months of age. So within a few days the blood had been broken down by his system and the healing had begun, with all tests coming back normal. He spent almost two weeks there, with us staying nearby at a wonderful non-profit house specifically for the families of patients of the children's hospital; but what a relief it was to finally get him home. Of course, not having a nurse around to hand him off to for the 3:00 AM feeding took some adjustment, but so far, so good. At this point, you'd never know that he had anything but a completely normal first couple of weeks. He's active and is certainly keeping us on our toes, and he's got the lungs of an opera singer (ouch! my ears! I'm tempted to upload a recording of him). Anyway, since all parents (I now understand) can't resist, here's another picture. This is Alex defeating ninjas in his spare time...
Attachment (1)
_____________________________
|