ER

What a few days these have been. On Sunday we had a home care nurse stop by (just to check in and for a lactation visit). Well she said he looked a "little jaundiced" so we should make a pedi appt. No big deal. Monday at 1 we took baby Justin to the Dr who sent us to the MAC center for bloodwork. All the nurses loved his hair- he's a little lady killer already. Well we finally got home and settled in when his Dr called me. His jaundice levels were above the safe level and she wanted us to take him to the Children's Hospital ER as soon as we could. He would need to be admitted overnight. I went hysterical. I kept kissing him and saying "he's so little, he's only 4 days old" I just felt soooo horrible for him. My understanding of jaundice was "oh, ha ha the baby is a little orange put him in the sun" now all of the sudden we hear about blood transfusions, super high levels doing brain damage or signs of liver failure.

We got to the ER and my eyes already burned from crying so much. We had to get his little stats checked and then we went to one of the "ER rooms". They told us we were waiting to be admitted to the 7th floor and they needed to run more bloodwork- that it would be about an hour. They started him on light therapy right away. I had to leave the room b/c they gave him and IV and it made me want to die- I'm not exaggerating. I could hear him scream down the hall and I almost puked. He was crying so hard and he had already been tested a bunch of times that day. Well we waited... and waited in that little room. The ER at children's is an absolute shithole. I promised I would never sugar coat my blog so there it is. The people are rude- it was filthy disgusting and our "1 hour" turned into 6 hours. I was beyond exhausted. Not exactly the "4 days postpartum" rest I was supposed to be getting. Finally after Jody started really laying into people, things got done. We were transferred to the 7th floor at 1am. What a world of difference! The upstairs nurses/rooms/facilities everything were just amazing. I cannot say enough about how fantastic everyone was. We were so well taken care of. They had beds set up in the room for us since he needed to be in one of those "tanning bed" light therapy tank/cribs and monitored. Here is the medical back story- I guess that his bili- reuben levels measured 22 at the MAC center. 25 is serious danger and 30 is organ failure. Anything above 18 needs light therapy. They said he could need up to 2 days of treatment. He was eating/pooping fine and there were no other problems with his blood tests. I guess it's just a normal, random "body getting used to processing" occurrence in some babies. When he was retested at Children's he was an 18.8- WAY lower than we had originally thought/been told. By 5am he was down to 17.6 then by noon he was at 14.6. We were released in 24 hours, last night at 7.

He was SUCH a little tough guy. I cannot believe how much he had to go through. I'm so proud of him already. It was without a doubt the WORST day of my entire life. I thought I felt my heart break before... HAH! Seeing my 4 day old son hooked up to tubes, covered in bandaids from bloodtests. It was torture. Now I'm just so glad he's better and we can go back to life as normal with our sweet little peanut =)