• 

When my sweet baby girl was born, she had a large soft tissue bruise on the top of her head. The doctors said it was normal, so I wasn’t concerned at all. 24 hours later she was yellow, extremely tired, and unwilling to eat. Her yellowing just continued to get worse as I watched her closely with tears in my eyes. I had so many questions. What is jaundice? How is it affecting her? Will it cause permanent damage? When will it go away? Are we going to be able to bring her home? This isn’t a medical journal, so don’t expect answers to all of your medical questions. This is our daughters story.

Our daughter started to look a little yellow in the middle of the night, about 8 hours after she was born. The nurse casually mentioned it and quickly left before I could ask any questions. I stared at her in her bassinet for a long time before falling asleep. She had a hard time latching, so I had to pump. A nurse came to wake me every two hours so I could pump and cup feed.

In the morning, about 16 hours after the birth, a nurse came in and used something that looked like a temperature scanner to measure my baby’s bilirubin. 11.7, she will need a blood test. And once again she left without answering any questions. Shortly after, another woman came in with a cart to take my baby’s blood. She pricked her foot and squeezed it to get a sample. About an hour later the results were in, 12.1

My lactation consultant was kind enough to explain the situation to us- Oz had jaundice, probably caused from her big bruise on her head. Her lack of interest in feeding was making it worse, and we’ll have to try harder to get her to feed. We would need to bring her back in the morning to get her bilirubin checked again, and if it continues to rise, we will need to wrap her up in a Biliblanket to help her stabilize her bilirubin level. The good news is that we would be able to use the Biliblanket at home.

Upon leaving the hospital after two days, we were instructed to bring her in for a blood test to check her bilirubin the next day. She has risen quite a bit,