Jaundice

Over the past week Jude has been through quite a bit with his jaundice - I feel as thought I keep mentioning it, but haven't really given a run down of what exactly it means to us.

When we were discharged on Thursday last week he was given a biliblanket:

Basically this machine is plugged into the wall and the hose that attaches to the glowing part (as seen above) goes on Jude's back. The light works to get rid of the biliruben.

Jude was on the blanket Thursday night through Sunday. Each of those days we had a visiting nurse come out to our house to test Jude's biliruben levels by doing a heal prick. For the heal prick, they'd put a small slit in the heal of his foot and use the blood to fill a small tube to test. The nurse would then deliver the blood to the lab for testing and we'd get a call back later that night with the results.

We were told on Sunday his levels were low enough to come off the blanket, but that he need one last heal prick to make sure his numbers are still going down. When we went in on Monday to the lab for his heal prick, we received a phone call that night telling us that his numbers were slightly elevated and he needed to go back on the blanket. bummer.

Not that it was my fault, but I felt like kicking myself. I had thought originally when they called Sunday that maybe I should just keep him on his biliblanket until we get the results back from Monday's prick. It wouldn't hurt him and could only help. However, being excited to be able to move away from the wall I took him off per the doctor's orders. I kept thinking if I had stuck with my gut instinct it would have been over for sure on Monday morning.

Either way, he went back on Monday night and we went back in on Tuesday morning to the lab for another heal prick. It ended up working in our favor though because Jude was exactly 7 days old and was able to get his follow up newborn evaluation (this typically needs to be done within 7-28 days after birth). The evaluation needed to be done at the same lab at the heal prick and they needed to collect blood, so we got it all done at once.

Monday night I got a call around 5:30 from the doctor's office. I was on the phone at the time with our insurance company, so thought I'd just call them right back. Seconds after getting off the phone I called the office back and they were closed. They had left a message, but all it said was they were calling with the bili-levels. So I needed to call back the next morning.

Fast forward to about 9:30 last night. We were keeping him on the blanket but were curious to know what the results were. For some reason I picked up my phone and I had two missed calls even though I hadn't heard it ring. One was from the doctor's office at like 7:30pm. The message again was very vague "we're calling with Jude's bili-levels, they are fine, please call the office in the morning". Now I thought, define "fine". Does fine mean he can come off? Stay on but he hadn't gotten worse? The numbers had gone up, but still were not in dangerous territory?

Either way we kept him on through the night and called them first thing this morning.

Fine means: he's done with the bili-blanket, he's done with the heal pricks and the rental company can come pick up their machine. This is much more awesome news than Sunday because that means it's officially over, none of this "we'll still need to test him, but he should be ok" bull crap.

In addition to it being GREAT news in terms of Jude's health and our sanity as new parents, it's also great news because we got a call from the rental company yesterday telling us that insurance typically only covers the machine for so many days and we had reached that limit (they could submit an extension request but apparently they're typically refused). They were letting us know that any time we needed the machine past yesterday, would be coming out of our pocket. Obviously we'd do anything to keep him healthy no matter what the cost, but it was still unsettling not knowing when it would be over.

However, I called them first thing this morning that the lady I spoke to said "so you were done with the machine last night, right?" I said "well, yeah - the doctor called last night". Then she basically told me she'd put it down as being completed last night so that we wouldn't have to cover any of it! All in all some great news this morning!

Jude's test results (I'm not exactly sure what the numbers 'mean' but I know they're on a scale and depending on how many days old he is the tolerance level for the numbers goes up - so a baby who's a few days old can tolerate higher numbers than one JUST born - if that makes sense. Also, we were told if his numbers were too high he'd have to be hospitalized - but once they went below 12 he was off the machine):

Wednesday May 6th: 4.9

Thursday May 7th: 8.9

Friday May 8th: 13.1

Saturday May 9th: 13.8

Sunday May 10th: 12.5

Monday May 11th: 13.1

I didn't get yesterday's number, but it was below the 12 mark.

This is all wrapping up at JUST the right time, because tomorrow we go to see the pediatric urologist for his hypospadias. Apparently this will only be a consultation and he won't be treated for it until about 6 months - but it'll be nice to not have to focus on TWO issues at once.