Our poor little punkin’ pie has had a rough start, but will hopefully be on the mend soon. After having slightly elevated billirubin levels while in the hospital, we were told to bring her to the doctor on Monday for a jaundice level check and weight check. Unfortunately, we’ve had to go back EVERY. DAY. SINCE for more re-checks. Yuck to foot pricks, yuck to baby blood draws, and double yuck to rising bilirubin levels. Yuck, yuck, yuck!
For our first night with elevated levels, the hospital staff dropped this little beauty off at our house. Our instructions were to keep Gretchen in the “glow worm wrap” (as we call it) around the clock, except for feedings and diaper changes. I thought this was awful as this limited our interaction with Gretchen and the kids didn’t quite understand why she needed to be plugged in and stuck in the nursery.
Fast forward 24 hours and it went from bad to worse…. When Gretchen’s counts were higher than before, the hospital van drove back to our house with a new gift: It is called a billirubin bed…. And it is Awful with a capital A! It is essentially a rectangular prism with a covering on top that doubles as both a straight jacket and a onesie. So you lay baby on top of rectangular bed, then velcro her inside of a straight jacket, leaving only her head and arms out of something that resembles the top of a onesie. Eh. As one can imagine, she H.A.T.E.D. it when I first put her in. I looked at the guy and asked if kids actually stayed in this thing for 48 hours?? He assured me she would settle down, and he was right. She was a good sport about the whole thing and it probably helped that the jaundice made her so tired….. If she wanted to fight it any more, she really didn’t after the initial fitting.
It is hard not to hold your newborn baby. It is hard to sit in a room next to her all day, knowing that I could easily leave and get something done and she would never notice – She stays asleep in her little box with the exception of when I wake her for feedings. It is hard to see her so little and so helpless.
As they say, this too shall pass….. And I have great confidence that it will. If this is the only complication from being delivered early, we’ll take it! We’re hoping that her counts will be down today and she’ll be out of her glow worm beds by the weekend.