Jaundice

Our little family was released from the hospital today!  Dr. Nance showed up bright and early, around 8 a.m. I think, and told us we were good to go and that he would get the discharge papers ready.  We were excited and got our bags packed, breakfast was brought in, baby Tyke was brought in and we waited.  The nursery nurse informed us that Dr. Fullmer would be making his rounds and wanted to talk to us before we took off.

I don't remember what time Dr. Fullmer showed up.  It was the first time I had met him, Chad had talked with him the day before.  We were both really impressed with him.  He informed us that he had studied up on my thyroid/endocrine issues and thinks that Tyke will have no problems, thank goodness, hopefully it stays that way.  He also informed us that the little goose eggs on Tyke's head were actually what they call a cephalohematoma, aka a birth injury!  We all figure it was from Dr. Nance having to turn our little guy because he was coming out face up.  Anyway, Dr. Fullmer explained that it's basically a bruise, a pocket of blood, between the skull and the scalp and that with time it would go away.  A side effect of this bruise breaking down and going away is jaundice and our little guys levels were high enough the doctor was a little concerned and gave us a few options.  1- we could put Tyke on the lights for a few hours while waiting to be discharged, and then follow up at the doctors office the next day, or 2- just go with the flow and watch him, if he becomes more jaundiced then take him to the doctors.  We decided to go with option 1.  We figured we might as well get ahead of the problem while we were just sitting around waiting anyway.

I fed and changed Tyke and then we walked him down to the nursery to be put on the lights.  It was so sad for me to strip him down to his diaper and then watch the nurse put the little blind fold on him.  He was a little fussy but it was nothing that a little sugar water on his binky didn't cure.  We watched as the nurse turned on the lights and heat and for our little guy.  We hung out with him for a minute and then headed back to our room.  We took a couple of good long naps that were interrupted with nurses coming in to get my vitals and bringing Tyke in for a feeding.

After feeding him we walked him back down and left him again.  Around TIME pm we were getting a little ancy because we hadn't heard anything from anyone.  We were ready to have our little guy back with us and ready to go home.  We walked down to the nursery to check things out.  The nurses had just checked Tyke's billi and the levels had gone up, but, because he was a few hours older at the time that evened things out so it wasn't really as bad as it looked on the charts.  They were in the process of contacting Dr. Fullmer to see what he wanted to do so we waited in the nursery with Tyke, still on the lights.  Dr. Fullmer said that he didn't see a problem with us taking Tyke home, but he suggested we come back the next day to have his billiribbon level checked again.

Tyke was discharged from the hospital around 6 pm.  While waiting for me to be discharged we called and made Tyke his first doctors appointment with Dr. Peterson (Dr. Fullmer wasn't working in the office this weekend).  I was finally discharged from the hospital around 8:30 pm and we headed home.