1-2-3: Michelle's first week

Some of you may know some of this already and to some of you this may all be news to you but Michelle had a rather eventful first week of life, being my daughter she couldn't do anything the average way. The afternoon of the day she was born Joe and I took her to the nursery for her to get her first bath.

sorry it's so fuzzy...

first bow! and for some reason the nurse gave her a mow-hawk...

While we were there the nurse noticed that she looked a little yellow and so she used a fancy machine to test her billiruben levels and told us she would have to wait for the results. We went back to our room while Michelle stayed for them to do some of the other newborn things. A little while later the nurse came to our room and explained that the reason that her results had not come back immediately was because her levels were off the charts.

Typically jaundice does not occur in babies until about 2-3 days of life (after you go home) but our little over achiever had it off the charts at 9 hours old. This meant that she had to go under the special blue lights. It is the blue hue of the lights that helps break up the billiruben so that she could pee it out as well as poop it out. The biggest bummer of it is that this meant that we couldn't hold her. The only time that she was out from under the lights was for feedings. Saturday morning the pediatrician came back and he explained to us that her type of jaundice was caused because of blood incompatibility. I am type o and she is type a and her body was attacking my remaining blood like it was an intruder which causes it to break down and form like three other things that if left to their own devices will end up staining the brain (ya know, generally a bad thing). Now please don't quote me as an authority on the subject and keep in mind I was sleep deprived so my retention may be lacking.

Here is our little blue angel:

The little mask is to protect her eyes so that the light doesn't burn her retinas (also generally a bad thing). Sunday morning her levels seemed to be stabilizing (rather than increasing like they had been) so the pediatrician decided to try her on the billi-blanket to see what her levels did. At that point he thought that she was doing well enough that she would be able to come home that night with the billi-blanket.

The billi- blanket isn't actually a blanket at all it is a lesser version of the same light therapy but it is small and so you can actually hold your baby while it is in use. The lights are facing down but you can see the blue glow coming from it. Unfortunately rather than continuing to improve she got worse which meant that that night rather than coming home she had to go back under the intense light therapy (read emotional mom that can't hold her baby). Thankfully my mom was able to come up from Salt Lake and spend some time with us. Even though I didn't need her to take the baby in the middle of the night or anything it was really nice to have her there for support. Monday morning the doctor said flat out that we would be in it for atleast another day because her levels went up yet again (if I remember correctly this is when she was at 15.9, if the get to 20 they have to start replacing her blood with blood that doesn't have any billiruben). Tuesday she was still under the intense lights but that night they tried her on the blanket again from 6 pm to midnight. At that point her levels were good enough that the doctor tried her without the blanket at all until 6 am. When he came in the next morning to talk to me about her progress he said that she had done well enough without the blanket that he felt safe letting her go home with the blanket since she hadn't done some major jump but she still needed the lights. So Wednesday she was discharged with a billi-blanket in tow! Joe booked it out of school to take us home. I was soooooo glad that she was improving and that I could finally go home. I had actually been discharged sat. afternoon but since I was a breastfeeding mom they let me stay in a "family guest room" (exactly the same as the postpartum room) so that I didn't have to come and go every two hours to feed her. It was a big blessing to be able to stay with her and the fact that it was free was even nicer. It was also such a blessing to have my mom there with me so that I wasn't sitting alone in the hospital all day staring at my baby that I couldn't hold.

Finally Going Home!!!!!

Thursday afternoon we had a pediatrician appointment to see how she was doing and he said that she was doing well enough to try it without the blanket again.

Friday morning we had another pediatrician appointment to check her levels and he said she was doing great. She still had jaundice but it was at a level that her body could handle it on her own now. Hooray!!!!

One week old:

(ok, I really need to remember to take these pictures during the day because once the sun goes down all I get are fuzzy pictures....)