Jaundice, anyone?

Disclaimer: this post has been submitted by a non-scientific, sleep-deprived novice. Any misspellings of pharmaceuticals, medical conditions, or other biological phenomena are therein expected and should be considered with a leniency appropriate to the material and situation.

So it's Wednesday, January 24th at 4:00pm, and we're still in the hospital. Why? Our little angel (and she is) has a bout of what I like to call The J.

About halfway through the day on Monday, in the midst of entertaining numerous visitors (thank you for your kindness, visitors), Katie and I noticed that our Lily was of the yellow variety and not the pink Lily we had ordered. We asked the nurse about this, and our suspicions were confirmed: Lily had The J. What did this mean? We wanted to know...

Lily, it seems, had developed a large hemotoma (a bruise, for anyone who hasn't taken biology since eighth grade) on her head during the fantastically wild ride that was her birth. This bruise, coupled with the breastmilk she was receiving from her mom, was increasing her bilirubin level and resulting in The J (on a side note, if Lily were a boy, Katie and I had narrowed the names down to Billy or Ruben). Medically, I am to understand, the recession of her bruise causes the red blood cells to break down and release bilirubin throughout her body. To cleanse her body of this material, our baby must eat enough to rid her body of waste...waste that includes our friends Billy and Ruben.

For anyone who has yet to become a parent, the initial newborn stools consist of a blackish tar called miconium, the stuff that so dutifully protects them in the womb, and it takes a few days for this tar-like substance to be passed fully. Then a yellowish, seedy-looking poop makes its debut, and it signals the processing of breastmilk by the baby. This is where we need to get. Lily has been eating, Katie has been pumping, and I have been doing anything I can to help with these two tasks. As it is, Lily is looking better and could potentially spend her last night in the hospital tonight. Her levels of Billy and Ruben will be checked at 6:00pm tonight and again at 6:00am tomorrow. If everything looks okay and her case of The J is lessening in severity, we should be on our way home tomorrow. Can't wait. I should say that all of the staff here at OSF in Bloomington have been tremendously helpful and kind, and we couldn't have asked for a better hospital stay (maybe that's where the word hospitality comes from), but we are ready to spend a night (albeit two hours at a time) in our own bed. And I know that Jay and Buster are looking forward to having the family back...even if it's slightly bigger than the last time they saw it!