Sunday, December 28, 2014

It was a Blue Christmas...

Thanks to the glow of LT's at-home bilirubin mat.

We left the hospital on Sunday with orders to visit the pediatrician the next day for a follow up bilirubin test as LT's levels were on the high-end of where they were comfortable.

The pediatrician wasn't able to fit her in until later in the afternoon, which meant that the results on the bloodwork came back after office hours. 8:30 that night the phone rang with an on-call pediatrician saying she couldn't reach our pediatrician (our ped is associated with the local medical school/hospital system) but the numbers from the afternoon test were high, close enough to the level of concern that we needed to go to the closest pediatric ER ASAP for treatment. WHAT?!

So, off we went to the pediatric ER where LT was retested, then admitted to the hospital (a different one from where she was born) for a night of being sandwiched between bili lights. By the time she and I reached the room on the pediatric floor, it was after midnight, and probably close to 2AM by the time the lights were delivered from wherever equipment was stored. Somewhere in there, DH drove home, collected things for me to be able to spend the night since we hadn't thought to plan for that (this is where being lazy and not really unpacking the hospital bag came in handy), returned, made sure everything was okay and then headed back home to sleep and be there for LO in the morning. Thank goodness my Mom was staying with us so that either I didn't have to go on my own with LT, or that we didn't have to drag LO with us!

LT and I stayed there through late Tuesday afternoon when it was determined that she'd both had enough time under the lights, that they had helped the level drop to an acceptable level, and time for a bounce-back test (to make sure levels didn't spring back higher), again with orders to get her levels tested in a day or so. On Thursday we went back to the peds for testing, and darned if her levels hadn't risen again! Thankfully not to the point of another visit to the ER, but enough to earn her an at-home light system and regular visits from a home nurse for blood tests. And so for the past two and a half weeks she has been wearing a light under her onesie and sleeper (so much for the east of the zippered kind) for the better part of each day, and because of that we've been tied to the house, and limited locations within the house. It made finishing Christmas shopping a tad difficult, and presents didn't get wrapped until Christmas Eve after the in-laws came because the presents and paper were on the 3rd floor and it was too much hassle to take the equipment up and bringing them down would have meant LO and other recipients possibly seeing them.



Number have gone down, and up again (I blame that on her not pooping for a couple days and the bilirubin bits reabsorbing - bilirubin is removed in poop), as of Friday she was at 9.5 which is the lowest since she left the hospital for the first time. The next test is scheduled for Monday and I'm keeping my fingers crossed hard that it will finally be the last day. All of us are ready for more flexibility in location - though it will be strange to not have the white noise of the machine constantly in the background!

Other than LT's medical adventures outside the hospital (LO kept hers contained to the hospital), she's been a very good baby so far. Only fusses when she wakes up hungry, nurses like a champ (though it appears that once again my supply is not enough for demand, more on that later), and in general is pretty chill. We'll see how that changes once she exits the 4th trimester! She gets 2-3 ounces of formula around midnight which fill her up sufficiently to sleep through until 2 or 3am, nurses then, and goes back to sleep until sometime between 7 and 8am. While I'm not getting as much sleep as I could if I went to bed before midnight, the couple times I've tried to do so LT kept me up until 1-2am. Apparently she objects to my getting more sleep.

Christmas here was good.  We had cut back some, but in the end it appeared otherwise because the IL's gave more than we did to both LO and LT. I guess that's one of the privileges of being a grandparent? My parents didn't come until the day after as they spent Christmas day with my grandmother. (Side note: she is not doing well, planning on moving out of independent living into assisted living in January, all of this went down in a matter of days while my Mom was staying with us after LT was born.) It was nice to extend the present opening as LO was turning into a holy terror by the end of present opening with the in-laws. A 4yo only has so much patience before the allure of new toys combined with the excitement of the day overwhelms all else.

Hope 2015 brings all the good you hope for, and none of the bad you fear.

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