Jaundice, Again!

I had really wanted to have a full term baby this birth partly because I wanted to try to skirt around my baby having jaundice. It was a lot of stress with Padon and I just was hoping not to do it again. But when Sophia was born 4 weeks early it was kind of an assumption that she would probably have jaundice too. And she did, *sigh*. I think they noted it in the hospital, even though I couldn't tell; she just looked warm in color to me.

Walter and I made our post-pardum appointment for two days after leaving the hospital and regretfully made our way to the dreaded Women's Clinic linked with Overlake Hospital. It was so stressful and unsupportive the last time we had been there that before the Jaundice diagnosis we had talked about totally skipping the appointment. But surprisingly this time the lactation consultant that we met with was not only supportive but down to earth. She didn't overly criticize Sophia's latch (actually told us we were doing fine and didn't discuss it further) and had a very frank but helpful conversation with me about post-pardom depression, anxiety, anxiety attacks and how to deal with them, and what my goals should be with a new born over the next 6 weeks (those goals being, have no goals, just go with the flow).

We, again, were sent, exhausted, with a grumpy Padon, back to Overlake Hospital to retest Sophia's bilirubin (thank goodness we remembered to make our appointment much earlier in the day this time) where they pricked her already very pricked heel (Padon talked about Pia's pricked heal for weeks after she was born; her heals were that bruised from the number of times that blood had to be drawn), and informed us they would not tell us the results of the test but would call our Pediatrician (46 miles away). We decided to stay in Bellevue for the next few hours, purchasing some much needed baby items, having dinner, and waiting for the Pediatrician on call to give us a call back. We were not going to drive to Arlington to find that Sophia's test results were too high and that we needed to come back down to Overlake to be admitted. 5 hours later we contacted the doctor to learn that Sophia's results were a little high but not enough to admit her and that we needed to come into the doctor's office on Tuesday, three days later due to the New Years holiday, and the next business day when the doctor's office was open. This in itself was stressful, as Sophia had already lost almost her full allotted 10% weight loss (down to 5lbs), and like a true jaundiced baby was hard to keep awake for feeding. When this happened with Padon he had lost 16% of his body weight and the doctors made us feel alarmed. I didn't want to go through that again. The lactation consultant confirmed that Sophia was eating well but still set us up with a syringe to give supplemental feedings to what breast milk I pumped and we went home.

Using the syringe was awesome because we could really pack Sophia full of food; because who doesn't want to swallow when someone squirts liquid into the back of your mouth. Easily we were getting 3 ounces into her. I had been a little concerned that we might break what nursing progress I had established if we just put a ton of liquid into her mouth, making drinking easy, and so I fed the tube into a pacifier (mostly because holding the tube on my finger as instructed and trying to get Sophia to suck at the same time, while suppressing the syringe made my wrist feel like it was going to break) and then semi forcible put it in Sophia's mouth, only squeezing the syringe as she sucked on the pacifier.

On Tuesday she had gained back two ounces and the jaundice had improved although just a little. A week later she had gained back almost her birth weight and she was looking really good.

I really couldn't believe we were reliving this experience. Not the syringe which was a new one for us, but the stripping the baby down every time we went to feed her, playing with her ears and feet, flapping her exposed arm like a chicken, kissing on her face (oh well I would have done that regardless) and overall abusing the peacefulness that was being a sleepy infant.

I think I did feel a little bitter that we had to play the Jaundice game again but at the same time is seemed very reasonable that a 4 week premature baby might have an under developed liver, especially when her 2 week premature brother did.