Blue...

You’re two days old today!  Despite having your days and nights all mixed up, you are such a good baby!  You rarely make a peep and never cry – I keep asking the nurses if they are sure everything is okay because you are just so calm!  One nurse said “calm parents make calm babies.”  I guess that means Mommy and I are doing an okay job so far.  :)  We keep hearing the baby across the hall cry and cry and cry.  We just snuggle you even more!  Mommy especially loves to just sit and cuddle you all the time.  She can’t get enough of your chubby little cheeks!

This morning they did a bilirubin test and it came back high.  They followed that up with a blood test, taking the blood from your heel (that's where they always take your blood from - if you look at the picture above you'll see lots of bandaids on both of your heels!).  The nurse fed you sugar water while they took the blood.  You were happy as a clam, but I couldn’t stand to watch.  That test came back high as well, so they put you under the blue light for several hours and said they would do another check later in the afternoon.  It killed me to see you under there.  I just wanted to hold and snuggle you!  And it made me sad that you had to hang out under the light all day.  All of the nurses that came in commented on how good you were, though.  You just slept under there (with your little eye mask on) all day.  I was so grateful that you slept so well and didn’t cry.  I don’t think I could have dealt with it if you were stuck under there crying!

When the afternoon test (another heel blood test!) came back, your bilirubin was still too high.  The doctor said we could either take you home with a biliblanket and follow up daily at the clinic or we could have you stay under the light overnight.  

At that point (late in the afternoon), we decided it would be better to stay and keep the lights going full force.  So looks like we’ll have another night here.  I was released from the hospital, but they’re letting us stay in our same room so we can be with you, which is nice.  As you can see in the picture below, the bili lights are obviously working.  When we take your eye mask off we can see the yellow around your eyes where the lights haven't been able to get to.  

You have been a little dehydrated today – there were crystals in your diaper.  The nurses say that is normal, especially with the bili lights, but I freaked out!  I have been breastfeeding you exclusively, but with the bilirubin light the doctors say that we should start supplementing with formula as you will likely become dehydrated under the blue lights.  Today we fed you some formula with a syringe.  Thankfully you drank it all up like a champ when Mommy fed it to you (with a little help from a nurse)!  I’m so happy – and thrilled that Mommy gets to help feed you too!

Mommy went home for the first time this evening.  She needed to pick up a few things, and I figured at least one of us should breathe some fresh air!  She hurried right back, though, and said she missed you so much in the short time she was gone!  Hopefully tomorrow we’ll break out of this place and head home.  I can’t wait!