February 23
That’s right! We have another jaundice baby! Joseph was our first and that was brutal. We had an extra 3 days in the hospital with him. I also felt like a complete failure when we had to put Joseph under phototherapy. It was the first time I had tried breastfeeding and I was determined and committed to achieving success at it. Then, when Joseph got jaundice, I felt like I had failed him. I turned to pumping and we made sure we got him fed and got rid of the jaundice. Then once we got home, we started breastfeeding again and he was a pro within 2 weeks.
Jordanna took 5 months to learn to breastfeed exclusively. It was a struggle and a brutal pumping schedule, but I know that if I am determined to stick with breastfeeding for 5 months with Jordanna to get her to do it exclusively and I got Joseph to breastfeed after being in the hospital for a week with bottle feeding, then I should be okay with Jonah! I am definitely hoping Jonah’s breastfeeding adventures are more like Joseph’s than Jordanna’s!
I have heard that blood incompatibility can also be a factor in getting jaundice along with breastfeeding and none of the kids have O blood like me. They have either A or B and Josh is AB. The same feelings hit this time as they did with Joseph but I was not as emotional this time. I knew what lay ahead and what I had to do. I knew I could help him beat jaundice through pumping and bottle feeding and then we could focus on breastfeeding when we got home. But I still felt like a failure.
As a Mom and as their sole source of food, it really sucks when complications arise due to breastfeeding or lack thereof. I have zero issues with formula either just so we’re clear. Both Joshua and Jonathan were formula fed and it was great! We’re at a point though that I have a breast pump and can produce milk so why not use it. Pumping is definitely a lot more work than breastfeeding, but you do what you need to for your family to thrive. The emotions just suck! So here we are, back in the hospital. The place I begged to leave as quickly as possible yesterday and we’re here for at least 24 hours. The home sickness has already kicked in along with the nausea and missing the kids at home, but I know Jonah needs to be here to make sure he’s healthy and I’m thankful that I have a lot of data on my phone to distract me!
I don’t understand bilirubin too well but, from what I understand is that, the levels of bilirubin are supposed to decrease as your baby poops and pees out the bilirubin in its first days of life. The acceptable levels within the body increase as the baby gets older. A baby that is 24 hours old has an acceptable threshold that is lower than that of a baby that is 48 hours old so essentially if the bilirubin levels within the baby decrease or at the very least stay stagnant, then as they age in hours, the acceptable levels within the body increases. So when we arrived here and had the tests, Jonah’s levels were 299 which are above the acceptable level of a 48 hour old baby. I knew we were staying at that point and when I saw the colour of his skin when they first weighed him, I figured we would be staying.
The lesson I’ve learnt in all of this is that I will breastfeed but I think that I will pump for at least the first few days to ensure the bilirubin levels decrease before really getting to exclusively breastfeeding. The pumps in the hospital are great and they have everything I needed to get right to work and get pumping milk into him! Josh left work and came to the hospital to support me for the first many hours we were here and treated me to a burrito! (I requested a veggie one of course since it is Lent!) They retested his levels around 8:00pm that evening, so about 10 hours later and his levels had decreased to 286. So not a significant change but a move in the right direction that’s for sure! I’m obviously okay with staying here for as long as he needs to so he can get better but I am just not a fan of hospitals!
They will retest him tomorrow morning to see what his levels are at. If I am understanding the graphs correctly, the threshold at that point for him would be around the 260-280 level since the 260 is for a baby at 48 hours old and 280 is for 60 hours old. At 72 hours old, the levels are at 300 and since he is less than that already, if his levels stayed the same at this point, we should be okay. I really hope we’re not here that long though but I can only do what I can to support him in this: pump, feed him, and keep him under those lights as long as possible.
February 24
Due Date and we’re still in hospital. They will retest him in a few hours however I was woken up at 4:30 am by a nurse checking his vitals. He slept for hours without waking up to eat and I somehow turned my alarm off during the night so I didn’t wake up at 3:30 am to pump like I wanted to. His eye protection mask had fallen down off of his eyes and slid down his face. It kept doing that periodically throughout the day yesterday and it was freaking me out. I debated going to sleep at all because of it. The nurse had come in to do his vitals and noticed he was breathing funny so she checked on him. He must have vomited and inhaled some so now I’m waking to nurses coming in and a respiratory therapist checking on him. Poor little man is keeping us on our toes. After a good little cry, it seemed to clear things up but now I’m not going back to sleep!
The respiratory therapist keeps coming in to check on him and it sounds like the nurses are sending them in, but they don’t say anything to me and he does not look like he is labouring to breathe. Perhaps the nurses are hearing something, but the three times that a respiratory therapist has checked Jonah out, he has been fine. So we are definitely praying he stays that way. They also retested his bilirubin levels at around 6:30 am and I ended up falling asleep after that. Then I wake up to another nurse having to readjust his little “sunglasses” and he had managed to turn himself sideways in the incubator! I feel like they’re going to think I can’t raise children pretty soon, but I can! I have 4 healthy and alive kids at home and we’re on a 10 year streak this year with the oldest! All kidding aside though it is definitely stressful when every time I fall asleep, I wake up to something happening. I feel like I shouldn’t and can’t fall asleep now!
The Pediatrician just came in and went over the plan for the next few hours and I think I did my research correctly! Jonah is definitely trending downward in his Bilirubin levels. They will retest tonight to see what his levels are. Then, we are probably staying the night tonight so they can test in the morning to make sure his levels are staying low. If everything goes to plan and his levels come down, then we should be able to go home tomorrow morning! The Pediatrician did mention level numbers, but he is so soft spoken and has an accent (I am terrible at understanding accents), but I think they are aiming to see levels of 240-250 which would make them happy enough to discharge him. So I see an end in sight hopefully! The next update will be either: I fell asleep and something happened, or they tested his levels and this is what they are lol! Thank goodness Mom is visiting me and bringing me a tasty dinner! It’s very lonely here because Josh has to hold the fort down at home and with everyone sick at home, it’s best that he stays there now until we get discharged. Newborn’s definitely don’t need those germs!
They tested his bilirubin levels again at 8:00 pm and his levels were at 246 which is amazing! Now, as long as the test they do tomorrow morning comes back with the same levels or lower levels, we will get to go home! The Pediatrician said we could turn off the lights now too! My only worry is that he loves that incubator and sleeps so well in it and is not a fan of the plastic crib at all. Tonight should be fun!
February 25
So I did not sleep at all last night. I think I fell asleep for 30 mins around 4:00 am but Jonah would not sleep unless he was in my arms. I was tempted to put him back in the incubator to get some sleep but I didn’t want to upset anyone and his skin was dry enough from being in there. They came in at 6:30 am to take his bloodwork to test his bilirubin levels hopefully for the last time! Now we wait to see if we’re going home. The staff have been great here! Very supportive and always making sure I was taken care of along with Jonah. The respiratory symptoms he was having ended up not being a concern beyond last night. The food has been alright for the most part but there was just not enough coffee to survive on! I have a good caffeine headache at this point.
We found out around 11:00 am that we were being discharged! The Pediatrician came in to talk to us one last time and I was out of there by noon! I grabbed Josh’s Mom a French Vanilla on the way home and was just so happy to be home for good!
Getting Rid of Jaundice
Now that I have been through this twice, I did notice some differences in how we treated Joseph versus Jonah in lowering their bilirubin levels and the results in the two different approaches. I wanted to share them in case someone else goes through the experience and could use some food for thought.
With Joseph, he was the first baby I had ever tried to breastfeed and I was stubborn and determined in my approach to it. Even after the jaundice diagnosis, I kept trying to breastfeed him followed by bottle feeding him expressed breast milk which resulted in more time out of the incubator and less time under the lights. We did have a “blanket” light that we used on his back when he was out of the incubator but it’s not the same as the full light in the incubator. I can’t remember if the blanket went under his back while in the incubator or not. More time out of the incubator resulted in more time in the hospital for us with Joseph. He was under the lights from a Sunday afternoon until a Wednesday afternoon and then we had to go back to the hospital on the Thursday and Friday for repeat testing. His levels didn’t begin to decrease until the Monday afternoon and they slowly decreased. So, what worked in our favour here was time and the fact that the acceptable levels of bilirubin increased as time went by.
For Jonah, I was breastfeeding him until we went home and then I pumped once to make sure he got a good feeding into him. He hadn’t peed yet at that point so we wanted to make sure he peed within 24 hours. When I was readmitted to the hospital though, I was done with breastfeeding for the time being. I called Josh and asked him to bring the pump. The hospital has a pump though and accessories so I got straight to work with a pumping routine to feed to Jonah. He was only out of the incubator long enough to feed him a bottle, burp him, and change his diaper if needed. There were a couple times that he just needed snuggles and we gave those to him but only long enough for him to settle down plus an extra 5 minutes. When we put him back into the incubator, he would go right to sleep. More time in the incubator and just solely giving him the bottle resulted in less time at the hospital for us with Jonah and the levels dropped at each test. They also had the “blanket” phototherapy light under his back hon the bed of the incubator plus the light over the incubator. I don’t remember if they did this for Joseph, but this therapy seemed to be highly effective because it was covering more of the surface of his body versus just an overhead light.
None of this is medical advice. It’s just our experience with treating jaundice and what worked well for us. Once we got Joseph home, he was exclusively breastfeeding by the time he was 2 weeks old. So one thing helped my decision with moving straight to bottle feeding expressed breast milk with Jonah which was the fact that Joseph learned to breastfeed by 2 weeks old after the jaundice treatment. The other factor is that I was so determined to breastfeed with Jordanna that I didn’t give up. She learned to breastfeed exclusively by 5 months old! Yes it took 5 months of pumping, breastfeeding, and then following the breastfeeding up with expressed breast milk, and then washing and sterilizing bottles! So I know if I can do that, then I can do it again with Jonah, no matter how this goes!
If you are going through a jaundice treatment and just need some support, I am always here for you and with any diagnosis for that matter. I haven’t dealt with a lot of diagnosis’, but I am always available to support people!
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