They don't put this in the baby books

The second part of our story of becoming a family....... not exactly the one I'd planned. 

You have this precious little one that is depending on you for everything. They are so tiny and so sweet. The first day of life is like some cruel joke...bloodwork..circumcision...test for this..test for that. And all this little man wanted to do was snuggle with his mama. His blookwork showed that his bilirubin levels( what causes jaundice) was a little high which isn't uncommon. They advised to keep up on the breastfeeding and it would come down. Day 2 the level was still high but they didn't seemed crazy concerned and sent us home with a plan to see our pediatrician the next day. Our first day home we bundled him up and took him to his first doctors appointment , they took more blood and called us later to report that once again his levels were higher. We were to repeat the blood test again the next day. Now if you haven't seen a little one get blood drawn count yourself lucky. They take it from their little heels which I'm sure isn't as traumatic if its the one standard time. Our poor little man had his heels stuck 10X in 5 days....heartbreaking.So he was born on Tuesday , came home on Thursday and got the phone call Sunday that we needed to take him to Childrens immediately to admitted. Being a first time mom and getting that phone call was just devastating--well clearly being a mom in general and getting that phone call would be bad. I hung up the phone , handed him to Matt and packed us a bag in 5 minutes and we were out the door. When we got to children s we went to the floor our dr instructed but I was confused ...NICU?...I'm sorry no , our baby just has a little jaundice this can't be right. There are babies that are a pound or that have life threatening conditions in there , no way this is where he is supposed to be....but then the resident opened the door and said " Is this Maxwell, we are ready for him ". They took us in a little room to chat then had Matt take him to his nurse while they got me started on pumping breastmilk. I was confused on why I couldn't just feed him , then she explained we wouldn't be holding him at all till he was better.....and the sobbing continued. 

In the meantime on this Sunday we got a phone call from my mom that Al had passed out at church and was being rushed to the ER because his pulse was all over the place. It broke my heart not to be with them and it killed them not to be with us. Thankfully Al is ok and came home the same day Max did !

Here is what we quickly learned about bilirubin....all babies are born with it...usually babies get rid of it through dirty diapers or even if they have a higher level they can stay home and be put in sunlight or even a special blanket. The scale of whats dangerous is based on how many hours old they are but the one thing we knew was that 25 was the scary number.....thats when things could go extremely wrong...Max was admitted with 21.5....holy poo. As you can imagine all I did was sob... then I'd look around at the 20+ babies in this room and realized that we were blessed and then I'd sob some more thinking of what those parents were going through. When I finally got to go be with Matt and Max I asked Matt if he had taken a picture of him under the lights and he said it perfectly " no i don't want to remember this ever". We did eventually take a pic to show our parents. The first night was long and I just sat and stared at him , he was so sleepy....our nurse that night was an angel....she was a mother of 4, 2 of which had jaundice like Max and she was so compassionate. Around 3am Max was upset and I was too...she looked at me with a wink and said " Oh man i need to change his bedding , guess you will have to hold him while I do that"....the best 10 minutes ever. She said that clearly he needed mama snuggles and it was obvious mama did too.The next morning his level was down to 18 , then later down to 14...two days later it was 8.9 and he was cleared to go home,. I realize we are lucky and that this kind of situation is common and curable....still doesn't make it easy. I am grateful for our wonderful pediatrician who stayed on top of this and made sure things were handled quickly.Max is home and doing great...he had got down to 7.1 from 7.14 because of this but our little piggy is up to 8.5 !!!!! 

 

 Clearly he didn't mind his time in the tanning bed :)

 Get me outta here mom!!!!