;)
~ Josiah under phototherapy lights ~ Notice a trend? Seems our lives have a new factor monopolizing a bit of our time! Today we went in to the immunization clinic to get Josiah's first set of shots and while we were there we stopped to see our pediatrician 'cause Josiah was looking a bit yellow.
A VERY traumatic blood-draw (two of the three of us cried) confirmed that he has some elevated bilirubin levels (that's what causes the yellow of jaundice - I've learned SO much in the past few days about babies!). Bilirubin is a component of red blood cells. Basically, a baby's liver may not quite be able to keep up with the breakdown of the excess fetal red blood cells in part because they aren't flushing as much out of their system until breastfeeding really takes off and they're rehydrated. Fortunately, a very specific wavelength of light helps the body bind the bilirubin and flush it out of the body as waste.
So our pediatrician admitted us to the hospital for 24 hours of phototherapy. In the more developed world, phototherapy for a relatively mild case of jaundice would be treated by purchasing a phototherapy blanket, going home, and wrapping baby up in the blanket for a day or two. THAT sounds easy. Phototherapy here in Uganda is the old-school kind. And, as our nurse proudly told us, a very unique feature at our hospital - not all hospitals even have phototherapy facilities;)
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For phototherapy in the hospital, you put baby onto a plexiglass panel with bright blue lights above and below (that magic wavelength is in the blue part of the spectrum). They wear only a diaper and something over their eyes. In the States they have these nice little sleep masks like on the airplane that protect baby's eyes from the bright lights. Here they take a whole bunch of gauze and wrap it up into a blindfold. It's functionally good but irritated Josiah's face and was too easy for him to grab with his little hands and pull off. The plexiglass is, of course, hard and the lights are bright. So we pretty much had to put him to sleep and then gently lower him onto the glass for as much light as he could get before waking up to feed. He needed to eat about every hour to keep hydrated and flush the bilirubin out.
All told, it was a sleepless night. The pediatrician drew a little blood again (he was very gentle - only one of us cried this time) and the levels had dropped enough for him to be willing to send Josiah home. So, for Christmas Eve we got to bring Josiah home again. -Shauen