Yes.  My baby was ‘yellow-bellied’ for a time (and yellow fingered and yellow toed and even yellow eye-balled…).  Before leaving the hospital, I expressed my concern about the color of my baby’s skin (yellow tinge being a symptom of jaundice) and everyone kept telling me ‘don’t worry, don’t worry, she’s normal.’  Finally, they bounced some light off her skin and said the score (?) came back ‘low risk’ for jaundice.  At home, I went a few rounds with the appointment people at Kaiser who insisted that Ella didn’t need a check up for two weeks (I had been told at the hospital and read on the Kaiser website that she would need to be seen at three to five days).  Finally, they agreed to have a nurse weigh and measure her.  When the nurse walked into the little examination room, the first thing that she said was that she was going to set up an appointment for the pediatrition immediately.  Apparently, Ella was yellow enough by this time to been extremely concerned.  One heel prick later (they stabbed my baby …)  I was told that Ella had a bilireuben level of 17 and needed to go to the hospital to be under the bililights overnight.  In very short order I became well versed in ‘jaundice.’

For those of you who aren’t very familiar with it, I will give you a quick synopsis.  When old blood cells die, they break down leaving a by-product called “bilireuben” (sp?).  Usually, your body cleans it out and sends it out with the other ‘waste.’  At any given time, normal people have a bilireuben level of less than one.  Babies are born with lots more blood and therefore lots more dying cells than other people so their bilireuben levels are a bit higher.  Also, since they don’t eat very much at the beginning, there is less waste for the bilireuben to be flushed out with.  As it builds up in their systems, it gives things a yellow-ish tinge, starting with skin and moving in to organs.  A level of 20 is pretty scary and 30 causes brain damage.

Had we waited to take Ella to the Dr. until 2 weeks, she would have had brain damage by then!  I also learned that they should have done a blood test on her before they let us go home from the hospital.  That was just negligent of them.  A lot of people would just have said, “oh, the doctor knows best.  She must be fine.”  Thank heavens I am so pushy!  (Side note: I have been extremely angry by some of the medical negilence I have heard of recently.  I have a dear friend who nearly died because they took so long to diagnose her preeclamsia.  A cooworker of my mother’s lost one of her five-year old sons because they neglected to test for a virus before starting chemotherapy.)

Anyway, we drove out to the Kiaser Hospital in sunnyside.  I didn’t sleep well.  You wouldn’t either if you saw your baby all hooked up to leads like this:

It just broke my heart.  At first, she was too fussy to sleep on her back and they let her sleep on her tummy (a big no-no in the baby world, because of SIDS; but since they had her hooked up to so many monitors, they weren’t too worried).  In the morning, her bili-level was down to 12, so after another 6 hours under the lights, they let her go home.  It was almost comical to see her when they took off the mask and leads, because wherever the light touched had turned pink but wherever the mask and leads were was still yellow.  She looked like a raccoon.  (It was also very sobering to see the contrast in what her skin was supposed to look like to what it had been when the bili-levels were up).  The rest of month one passed much less eventfully.  We adore our little baby.  Here are a few pics: