Jaundice

So anyone who has had a baby knows how common jaundice is. Alena had just a tiny touch of jaundice while she was in the NICU, but it was never anything that we got concerned about. She never even had to go under the bilirubin lights. Well, when they were discharging Bryson from the hospital the doctors said he was starting to look like he had a little touch of jaundice and we should call to follow up with our pediatrician once we were home. We went home on a Sunday, called the doctor Monday and they had us come in on Tuesday, August 9th. By this point our little guy was looking really yellow which you can see in these pictures.

These totally don't even do it justice, he was yellow from head to toe.  Even the whites of his eyes were yellow.  Dr Carter wanted us to go and have his bilirubin levels tested to see what his level was to decide if we needed to do anything for it.

For those of you that don't know, bilirubin is the waste of broken down red blood cells.  It is normally processed by the liver and then passes into the intestines and is passed in poop.  Babies can have an excess of bilirubin in their systems for 3 reasons, one because their blood circulates more quickly because they are smaller so the red blood cell waste builds up more quickly, two because their livers are not developed to the point of being able to handle the amount of bilirubin produced, and three because the bilirubin is reabsorbed from the intestines before the baby passes it.  If there is a build up of bilirubin in the system it causes jaundice which is a yellowing of the skin and eyes.  If the build up level gets too high it can actually cause deafness, cerebral palsy and other brain damage.  You can see why it is important to treat jaundice as quickly as possible and why the Dr wanted to be sure we checked Bryson's levels.

We took Bryson straight to the lab, they poked his heal, got the blood they needed and told us we would hear from the doctor soon.  About an hour after we got home the doctor called.  The first thing he said was, "Guys these numbers aren't good.  We sound the panic alarms if the level is 20 or higher and little Bryson is at 19.7."  I asked him what we needed to do.  Knowing he came back that high really had me worried.  I asked the doctor what we needed to do, fully expecting him to tell us to head back to the hospital so he could be treated with the bilirubin lights.  When babies are jaundiced they can lay on a little bed of lights that is essentially a form of a tanning bed.  The special lights break down the bilirubin in the system even farther so that it can be released from the body in both urine and poop.  This helps it exit the body quicker and bring down the bilirubin level.  Rather than tell us to go to the hospital though he said that a set of lights was on its way to our house.  I was so relieved, I didn't want to have to go back to the hospital.  He told us to have Bryson on the lights whenever he wasn't eating.  The more light exposure he gets the faster the bilirubin is broken down and the sooner he could be off the lights all together.  He told us to take Bryson to the lab again the following day so that we could see where his level was after some time on the lights.

Well at about 10:30 pm on the 9th the lights showed up.  They taught us how to use them (pretty easy) and then I feed him and laid him on the lights.

 
Doesn't he look so cute.  There was a flat bed with lights all underneath him and then a paddle that laid over the top of him while he laid inside the little suit that fastened to the bed.  I think the next 3 days were the hardest for me since Bryson was born.  All I wanted to do was snuggle my new little one but all I could do was feed him and put him back on his lights.  I would just sit by him, hold his little hand and cry.  That's what hormones will do to you my friends.

 We called it his little blue space suit.  I think it is cute, but I still hated having to have him on them all the time.

His level on the 10th was down to 18.5, so he stayed on the lights.  Level on the 11th was 15.8, stay on the lights.  When we took him in on the 12th his level came back at 13.  At that point Dr Carter said he didn't have to be on the lights all the time but I still had him sleep on them that night.  We tested him again on the 13th and it came back at 14.5.  The doctor said that so long as we felt he was eating and pooping consistently that we didn't need to have him tested anymore and we could keep him off the lights, but if we felt like he was starting to look more yellow to call and he would put in the order for more labs.  Well, we didn't feel like we were seeing any change but when we took him in for his 2 week appointment on the 18th he said he thought he still looked yellow, so he sent us back to the lab.  Other than the jaundice Bryson looked great.  He weighed in at 7 lbs 5 oz (passed up his birth weight) which was the 16th percentile and he was still 21 inches long, the 67th percentile.  He is a long and lean little boy, just like his daddy.

Well we went to the lab and his level came back at 16.  Dr Carter said if we tested him again the following day and it was higher then he would have to go back on the lights.  We took him in again on the 19th and it came back at 15.  Since it didn't go up they decided we could be all done with the lights.  His little body was managing it as well as it could so we just waited for him to get passed it completely on his own.  Luckily within the next few weeks he wasn't looking yellow at all.  We finally had a healthy pink baby instead of a yellow one.  Quite the ordeal, but we are so glad that that was all we had to deal with.