Jaundice

When Maya was discharged from Riverton Hospital after she was born, her bilirubin was a bit elevated (9.9) and she was jaundiced. That is not terribly uncommon in breastfed babies. The pediatrician that discharged her wanted her to get it rechecked at the office the following morning, so we took her in. It was up to 15. That was high enough that the doc wanted her to go on a bilibed at home (lights), so IHC homecare brought the bed to our house and taught us how to use it. Maya had to be velcroed into this spacesuit looking thing that was attached to the top of the bed...looked like a mini tanning bed. She did NOT like being velcroed into that thing. Also, I had to keep checking her temperature while she was on it and that kept waking her up. She cried a lot and by the middle of the night, I decided that was just not working. In the morning I called the doctor on-call and asked them to change her orders to a biliblanket instead (lights that you can put around them and still hold them). Home health brought that out to us and took the bilibed. The biliblanket seemed to be working out ok...then it stopped working the next morning. So AGAIN home health came to our house with a new device. The biliblanket had a rather large cable attached to it that was pretty cumbersome, but we just kept doing it because we knew that we had to get her bilirubin level down...by this point it was up to 19. If bilirubin gets into the mid-20's, it can cross the barrier to the brain and cause blindness, deafness, brain damage, and even death. Needless to say, by this point David and I were pretty stressed and worried. Clinically Maya was doing everything she should be doing, though, so the doctor monitored her bilirubin for a couple more days (her poor heels got poked a lot!). David and his dad gave her a blessing. After a couple more days with levels of 19 even with the biliblanket, Maya's doctor said that to be on the safe side we probably better take her to Primary Children's Medical Center to be evaluated. In the ER her bili was up to 21, but the rest of her labs were normal. They kept her overnight for intense bililights (2 overhead and 1 underneath) and IV fluids to help flush the bilirubin out. By morning her level was down to 14, which had us breathing a big sigh of relief. Maya was released from the hospital and we are continuing monitoring at home. She has to go in for another draw on Monday but her color is improving, so we are hopeful things are fine.