Adventures with Jaundice and White Blood Cell Counts

Once we got thru labor the first 24 hours of life were very calm for Bo.  Visits from friends and family, lots of pain meds for me, and lots of rest.

But that all changed on Monday night.  They took Bo to do a couple of blood tests and about an hour later came back and said they needed to put him in their equivalent of a nicu under the billi lights.  His jaundice levels were far too high for only being 24 hours old. It was a complete bummer because I love the bonding time the hospital allows...I hated to lose that but knew it was necessary.  As I tried to settle in and get some sleep the on call pediatrician came in to talk to us.  Having a newborn and having a pediatrician wake you up at 11:30 pm is terrifying.  She told us in addition to the billi lights she was going to put an iv with antibiotics on him.  His white blood cell count had come back on the high side of normal indicating a possible infection.  All she could tell us was that it could be nothing or it could be serious. At that point you may as well throw out any rational thoughts that I was having...the hormones and exhaustion were in full force.  Thank God Ben is a very calm man...he talked me down.  I spent the night either in the nicu or trying to block out his crying (which you could hear in our room).  He did not like not being held and it was a rough night.  He got better about that with each hour.

In the morning they moved him into the isolette for more intense billi lights as his newest test showed a rise in levels.  We knew at this time we were looking at him needing at least an additional 24 hours of care and were assured that we would be able to stay somewhere in the hospital, if not on the maternity wing.  That night exhaution had set in big time and I was a crying, hormonal mess...it was not pretty.  We were moved up to a different room, far away from Bo.  I was grateful for the room but worried about being so far away.  That was a long night of trips across the hospital and phone calls to our room paging me down.  At one point I fell asleep in the rocker in the nicu.  I talked to the nicu nurse and mad clear our desire to go home if his tests came back good...i did not want to do another night like that if we didn't have to.

The morning did bring good news!  His results were all so good that they took him out of the lights and off antibiotics.  But we still needed to wait on another round of rebound bloodwork.  The nicu nurse worked hard all morning finishing off everything that he needed to be discharged.  I really appreciated all the work the nurses put in!  Finally about mid afternoon we got the all clear and we started getting ready to go.