Bilirubin

Our pediatrician came Thursday afternoon and examined our little man declaring him quite healthy and ready to head home when I was discharged in the morning.  5AM Friday morning he went for the standard bilirubin test and unfortunately it came back at an unsafe level.  Our poor little man was yellow.  This resulted in a longer stay and lots of bilirubin lights.  It was torturous not to hold our little man.  But, I knew it would be short-lived and it was helping our little man get better.  I could at least take him out to feed, but those moments seemed awfully short.  He handled it like such a champ, though!  I had to pump because the jaundice made him lethargic and he didn't want to nurse and they wanted to know exactly how much milk he was getting.  God answered our prayers and my milk supply didn't suffer and he has not had trouble nursing as a result.  Thank you, Lord, for being God of the details!

I cried when we first placed him in there.  He just seemed so pitiful.  Guess our little man just needed some tanning time.





They use sticky velcro to keep the shades on.  It was rough on his poor little skin!  Big welts when we peeled the velcro off.  But, they did fade quickly--thank goodness.  He's a trooper!  Hardly even whimpered during the blood tests he had every 6 hours until the levels became safe enough to head home.

At one point the pediatrician thought we might have to put him on antibiotics for 2 days and run blood tests to see why his levels were so high and not going down.  I nearly started bawling.  I made it back to the room and just began praying for him.  Within 5 minutes our pediatrican came to the room saying she'd talked with the NICU doctor and he didn't think antibiotics were necessary at that time.  Talk about a fast answer to prayer!  We were finally released Saturday night.  Our precious nurse, Karyl, made sure to write up all the discharge papers and get us out before her shift ended because she knew how anxious we were to get home.  We didn't even end up having to pay for an extra day, even though our stay was extended.  God looks out for us like crazy!