When Lydia was given all the tests at the hospital, everything looked great except one thing: her bilirubin levels were a liiitle bit high. Bilirubin is (I hope this is at least semi-accurate information, haha) something in our bodies that is supposed to be broken down by our liver and then pooped out, but oftentimes baby's liver's aren't quite up to snuff, so the bilirubin builds up and this build up causes the skin and the "whites" of eyes to look orange which is called Jaundice. We were released from the hospital Saturday morning, but I was told I needed to take Lydia into lab the next day (Sunday) to get her blood tested to monitor the bilirubin. The nurses assured me that it really wasn't much to worry about and that it is really, really common, so I took their advice and didn't think much of it.
Taking Lydia into the lab that first day was so sad! They pricked her little foot and then squeezed drops of blood out until it filled a teeny tiny little vile. Lydia SCREAMED and screamed :(. It almost broke my brand-new-mom-heart.
The drill was repeated on Monday, and then we took her to a doctor's appointment shortly after. The doctor said that her levels had continued to rise so she needed to be put on a "bili-bed" that would help her body breakdown the excess of bilirubin. The good news was the bed could be delivered to our house and she could stay on it there. The bad news was that Lydia was to stay on the bed AT ALL TIMES other than eating or getting her diaper changed.
Personally, I felt like I'd been doing a pretty good job of holding it together until the doctor said that...and then, there was no holding it together. I broke down, hardcore. Being told you're not allowed to hold your baby as much as you want just a few days after she's born??? Not okay.
The Bili-Bed was delivered Monday night around 7:00 pm (after some really annoying issues with insurance). The doctor wanted to make sure I received the bed and the blanket. "Blanket" is an extremely inaccurate description of what the "blanket" actually was. In reality the "blanket" was a paddle that Lydia had to have strapped to her stomach!
^^NOT A BLANKET. It was literally a hard plastic paddle with thin fabric over the top that we had to velcro around Lydia's body. I wish I'd gotten a better picture. Here's a slightly better one I found online.
The home-health guy that brought the bed set it up and showed us how to put Lydia in it. When we put her in that first time she was LIVID. She hated the thing! She hated it so much she peed all over it! Haha. (She really did - we're still trying to figure out how her diaper didn't catch any of the pee...)
Thankfully thankfully (due to many prayers) after a few minutes Lydia calmed down and she didn't actually hate the bed like I was sure she was going to. Surprisingly she slept on it fine (much to my denial, haha).
The next day we took her in to the lab around 3:00 to get her blood tested. I was told that her number was low enough that I should take her off of the bed! Now we just had to wait and see if her body would continue to breakdown and remove the bilirubin on its own, so we continued to take her into the lab to have her blood tested every day or two. I found out later that I was actually supposed to have kept her on the bed for another night, but that's not what I was told! And thankfully, after a few days her numbers were low enough that I was able to return the bed and she's been great ever since!
Although I was really bummed when I first found out about the fact that Lydia would have to stay on the bili-bed, I really am grateful for how everything went. First of all, I'm grateful that the bilirubin wasn't hurting Lydia at all. I'm also grateful that the treatment (aka the light-bed) wasn't painful. I'm grateful that by the end of the week Lydia was sleeping through her foot-prick blood-draws. I'm grateful for the technology that allowed her to get treated at home, and mostly I'm grateful that she didn't even have to stay on the bed for a full 24 hours!
Hooray for healthy babies!
_ _ _
han.
PS Stephen would always say that when the doctors and nurses talked about "bilirubin" it sounded like they were talking about some mean bully named Billy Ruben, which is where I came up with the title of this post. :)
