Hotel Hiranandani

Standard Indian dinner here at Hotel Hiranandani, and me with Micah in one of the few calm moments of the day. Note that photos are in reverse chronological order from the narration below....

Our little boxer all taped up for his match....

Adam posing as the patient in room 411....

Micah in his "arabian caftan" and his fantasy sponge-bath -- you can see how much he enjoyed it.

We spent most of the morning waiting for the pediatrician's visit that we hoped would be our exit permit to the outside world. In the meantime, Adam actually left our hospital room for the first time in about 36 hours, and Micah got a lovely spongebath from a pretty nurse that he howled his way through. Dude, this nurse was pretty! Afterwards, we dressed him in this adorable green caftan with matching top, and she said he looked like an Arab.

Seeing him naked made us realize that he had started to look a bit jaundiced. Our diagnosis was confirmed by the pediatrician, but rather than sending us home and telling us it would get better on its own, he ordered up a heat lamp and said that we'll have to stay here another night or two. We were so desperate for freedome we could almost taste it. The only consolation is that we're hoping that most of our stay here will be partially covered by our insurance, but otherwise, it was quite a bummer.

The heat lamp brought a whole set of challenges. First, we asked about eye protection from the UV light, and were told to just pull a cap over the baby's eyes. My experience with the caps we'd brought told me that they are too big and wouldn't stay over his eyes, so they sent me down to the gift shop for what I thought were special heat-lamp hats. (why don't they have little goggles like any decent hospital would?) Turns out the special hats were just as ill-fitting.

As we were fussing with the hat, we had people affixing a little pee-pee collector to our boy's boys for a urine test, and then a technician came to draw blood from his heel for a panel of lab tests that screen for metabolic disorder. Lots of unhappy crying and squirming later, the pee-pee collector had gotten dislodged, the hat was off, Micah's flailing arms kept startling him away and howling, and we had one very unhappy naked boy at the spa. This spa should have offered a manicure first, because the poor little guy kept scratching himself.

Daddy was also keenly aware of the dangers of UV exposure to his baby's eyes. We finally taped some cotton balls over Micah's eyes, and taped the hat in place over his cheek, but not before at least one technical failure of the hat that we worry has blinded him. We also taped socks around his hands, giving the effect of having a very scrawny boxer. We couldn't believe the hospital didn't have some simple goggles to protect his eyes, or even a low-tech eye patch.

Micah's squirming also made me keenly aware of the dangers of the bassinet he's in -- it is basically one fallen baby away from a big lawsuit. Luckily when he's swaddled, he can't get into trouble.

Although the doctor told us us to keep him under the lights anytime he's asleep, we felt like that's a lot of UV exposure considering that he quickly started looking better, and worried about our improvised eye protection failing during the night when we weren't asleep. I'm storing up stories about Hiranandani for other IPs who will eventually be here, and this is a good example of the frustrations we've found.

One funny story from the day: At one point, a nurse came in and saw Adam watching TV (as in the photo above) and scolded him for not wearing his hospital gown. She was the infection prevention specialist, so we hadn't met her yet, and she thought Adam was the patient. (you know you've had a tedious day when that's the funniest story you can think of!)

Our day was definitely cheered up by the solicitous care from Amit, whose official role is that of travel agent, but who has become our go-to guy for many problems; finally reaching my parents in Italy and telling them all about our past few days; having a nice long chat with Nik, who has just arrived in town for his baby pick-up in a few weeks; and reading all of the notes of congratulations we received from friends.

I'm so happy that everyone seems to think we picked a good name, and I hope that it will derail Adam's continued campaign to choose a different middle name and change the spelling of Micah to Mikah. On the topic of names, I have to repeat this adorable conversation that my sister had with her son, who referred to "that baby who's just no years old" and, when reminded that the baby's name was Micah, said "I love that name." When my sister asked why, he said "because it's the perfect name for that baby. I can't wait to play with Baby Micah!" (I hope Micah's coulsin isn't disappointed when he comes to visit us in 8 weeks and finds that Baby Micah can't really play with him yet, and I also hope Victoria doesn't mind that I post this....)