My little yellow baby before heading to the doctor:
Before even doing the blood work, the doctor told us she felt almost certain Kerra would need to be admitted to the hospital and undergo concentrated phototherapy and IV fluids for a while to flush her system and remove the excess bilirubin. Of course, I bawled at the thought of having to go back to the hospital after having been home for a few days (hello, "baby blues"), yet at the same time wanted to do anything and everything necessary to make sure Kerra was going to be ok. Dr. Sunderlan said they would send her bloodwork to the lab and would call us as soon as it came back to let us know what the treatment plan would be. We left the doctor's office around 4:00pm and about 5:00pm, the doctor's office called and said Kerra's bilirubin levels were high enough she did in fact need to be admitted as Dr. Sunderlan anticipated. After picking up Jathan from daycare and gathering some stuff at home, we made our way to the hospital.
We got to a room at Hendrick Chidren's Hospital and they began assessing Kerra, drawing bloodwork for labs, and getting her IV set. She spent the night in an incubator with a bililight and biliblanket. I stayed the night with her in the hospital while Russell stayed with Jathan at the house (he came back the next morning after taking Jathan to daycare and let me go home to freshen up).
That was one of the longest nights ever. Nurses were in every hour to check her vitals, draw blood for lab work, adjust temperatures, etc. It was so hard to leave Kerra in the incubator and not hold her and to see he being poked and prodded for various tests. It broke my heart. Although I could get her out for feedings and open the front of the incubator to change her diaper, that was about it. She'd cry and I'd stroke her arm or face through the holes in the incubator to try to console her as best I could. It was torture for me, but again, I knew the longer she was under the bililight, the better off she'd be and the sooner we'd be able to go home.
She did exceptionally well while in the hospital in terms of responding to the therapy. When we were admitted, her bilirubin levels were at 16. According to the doctor, the normal level is 7. For full term babies, the bilirubin level is considered high and needs treatment when it reaches 10. For small babies and babies born early, they consider it high before it even reaches 10. So, needless to say, it was a good thing we called when we did so that she could get the treatment she needed.
At 2:00am, they checked her bilirubin levels again and at that time it was down to 13. They checked the levels again later in the morning around 7:00am or 8:00am and they were at 10. The doctor came by that morning and was pleased with the progress she had made overnight and ordered for her levels to be checked again around 2:00pm. After they took her blood work at 2:00, the doctor had the bililight and blanket removed for 6 hours to see how well her body would handle breaking down/eliminating the bilirubin itself. The 2:00pm blood work showed her levels to be at 7! Yay!! We waited 6 hours and Russell and I savored every moment of getting to hold our baby girl again -- I don't think we sat her down at all during those 6 hours! After the 6 hours, they retested her levels and not only had she managed to keep them under the threshold of 10, they actually decreased slightly during that time to 6.8! What great news - her body was now processing the bilirubin like it should be! Modern medicine is truly amazing! We spent about 28 hours in the hospital and were discharged around 10:00pm on Tuesday night.
I can't post on this without mentioning how great Jathan was considering his whole world had been turned upside down for the past couple of weeks, he was tired, and he was confined to a boring ole hospital room with limited things to do. He had his backpack of toys and played and colored and ate his snacks/dinner and kept himself occupied while we were all in the hospital room those two evenings. Was he perfect?! Absolutely not! He was curious, asked a million questions, touched everything, pulled the nurse call rope in the bathroom, was loud at times, and somewhat whiny. But, honestly, I was so proud of how good he really was while we were there -- it was alot for a 3 year old to handle and he did good!
Russell and I were both so thankful that our trip back to the hospital was short lived and that it was for something that could easily be treated and not something more serious. We thank God for protecting us and our sweet babies and for giving us great doctors and nurses who took care of our little girl (and really all of us while were were there).
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