Jaundice

When we were discharged from the hospital, Savannah had a little bit of jaundice.  The doctors had repeatedly poked her to get bilirubin readings.  They told us that she was still in a normal range and that they weren't worried about it.  All our other children had a little jaundice, but were able to sit in the sun a bit and were fine.  Savi's our first winter baby. In fact like the Disney movie Frozen, her birth started an eternal winter.  Just kidding, but the coldest winter ever started whilst we were in the hospital, hence the sun wouldn't be out much.

Anyway, at our pediatrician check up 2 days later, they expressed concern over her color and ordered us to get yet another poke at a lab to get a bili score.  I believe it ended up being an 18 or something like it.  I think it was 11 or 12 at the hospital.  The doctor called us that evening and told us that he set everything up for us and we were to head to Sparrow hospital as soon as possible for her to spend the night under bili lights.  I think I went a bit hysterical.  My friend Sue Joseph was at our home, bringing us dinner, while I was on the phone with the Dr., Dan was at work, and my mom was at a cub scout awards ceremony with Donovan.  Sue saved me.  She took Savi and watched the littles while I repacked my hospital bag because I would need to stay the night as well to be with her and be able to feed her. I called Dan to come home quickly, and then called Mom to let her know what was going on.  We ate quickly and then Dan took us to the different hospital.

 My poor baby!  I am forever grateful that she was a newborn and as such would sleep pretty much whenever she wasn't hungry.  The jaundice also contributes to sleepiness and lack of hunger.  The more she's under the lights, the less we have to be there.

 Savi also became attached to this orange binky.  She would not keep any kind of pacifier in her mouth except this one (She still won't and it's the only one like it that we have. We've bought similar ones, but she won't have them because they are not the same.).  I'm also very grateful that she was able to be comforted by it.  I know she just wanted to be held, and it broke my heart that I wasn't able to do that except while she was eating.  It was a horrible overnight stay!  I was in such pain from my surgery and was having a rough go with it that I could barely get up and walk and had to deal with all of this and lack of sleep.  I seemed ok, but I felt like a basket-case.

There was nothing good about this stay except that it helped her jaundice lessen.  I was with Savi when they had to give her an IV in her ankle!  It was horrible!  I cried.  I had to hold her down while she cried.  Then, because Sparrow is a teaching hospital we got EVERY Tom, Dick, and Harry coming to visit.  We didn't get to sleep much.  I guess they must not use bili lights much because we got all sorts of students coming to check out the process because they had never seen them used before.  I really hate teaching hospitals!  Every hour or two a new set of looky-loos would come in to poke and prod my baby and ask the same questions over and over.  Every blood test they did I prayed that the levels would go down significantly so we could get out of there.  We were finally able to leave around 8 the following evening.  And to top off our "wonderful" experience, they billed us an arm and a leg.  We were told by someone at Sparrow that since we were recently discharged from her delivery and this should have been caught there, that it would just act as a continuation of that stay because it was within a certain time frame.  NOT! We got charged an extra hospital co-pay because it was a different hospital (even though McLaren didn't have these resources) and all the rest of the costs totalling more than a thousand dollars in addition to the already large bill from McLaren from my surgical delivery and all.  Stinkin insurance and hospitals! Not to mention the screw-up from our insurance just over McLaren's bill. They forgot to add Savannah on our insurance and were charging her in full plus a double co-pay (for her and me separate) all because she was born during Dan's work's open enrollment for insurance.  What a nightmare!  I am grateful that I look at everything on bills though.  If I thought to trust the insurance companies to put everything accurately we would have been in the hole another $5K!  Sorry about the soap box.  As I type, Savi was born almost 10 months ago and it is just finally getting solved.  What a pain!

Something light-hearted that happened during our stay, during a midnight feeding, I changed a poopy diaper and about freaked because her normally yellow poo was now bright orange!  When the nurse came in, I asked her if I needed to worry and was it bloody or were her insides being affected by the UV lights?  I had to save all of the diapers to be weighed, so she checked it out.  She was very nice and didn't laugh at me, though I laughed at my stupid, sleep-deprived self.  The yellow poo under the blue glow of the bili lights made it look orange, but it wasn't.  I had forgotten that I wasn't looking at it under normal lights!

Dan used Savi's eye shield to see what it was like. Goof!  He couldn't see anything.

Overall, I'm not a fan of Sparrow.  The regular nurses were sweet and nice, but the students were annoying.  I'm grateful that Savannah's bili levels were able to go down and we could finally go home and get back to normal life.  I don't want any of us to see another hospital for a long time!