September 2006

Alexander Saulvedis Pennebaker Rutins

September 7, 2006 13:50

At last I get around to updating this blog with my most monumental news -- though you'll excuse the delay, I hope, as I've been rather busy.

Alexander Saulvedis Pennebaker 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 nearly a month 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 to a hospital (the best in the region, as luck had it) about two hours away that had 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.

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). He enjoys choral music; I honestly haven't had the opportunity to even play the violin since he was born, but I'll get to it eventually...

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September 2006

Alexander Saulvedis Pennebaker Rutins

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