2 Apr 2009 - Little prince still in hospital

This morning, I asked Jerlene if she wanted to go school and she was very excited. As she seemed to be ok and her temperature was normal, I decided to bring her to school.
Tracy came along as we may need to discharge our little prince from hospital later. After we handed over Jerlene to the childcare teacher, we went to a nearby coffeeshop for breakfast while waiting for Dr Tan to call regarding our little prince's condition. We waited for quite sometimes and he finally called at around 11am. He said that the baby's jaundice level was still considered high (13.2), which was worse than the day before. Dr Tan said if we brought the baby home and did not let him undergo the phototherapy yesterday, the jaundice level would be much higher. So he recommended to let baby stayed one more day in hospital and continue with the phototherapy.

For those who are not familiar with newborn jaundice, I'll briefly explain here based on what I know. A common condition in newborns, jaundice refers to the yellow color of the skin and whites of the eyes caused by excess bilirubin in the blood. Bilirubin is produced by the normal breakdown of red blood cells. Normally, bilirubin passes through the liver and is excreted as bile through the intestines. Jaundice occurs when bilirubin builds up faster than a newborn's liver can break it down and pass it from the body. Reasons for this include:
- Newborns make more bilirubin than adults do since they have more turnover of red blood cells.
- A newborn baby's still-developing liver may not yet be able to remove adequate bilirubin from the blood.
- Too large an amount of bilirubin is reabsorbed from the intestines before the baby gets rid of it in the stool.

According to Dr Tan, jaundice level below 10 is considered safe. Above it will require some form of treatment and if above 20, it's considered in danger zone. Anything above 25 may require exchange transfusion. For our case, the jaundice is probably caused by the still-developing liver and the incompatibility of mommy's and baby's blood group. Tracy is O+ while baby is B+. Such combination tends to cause high jaundice level for newborn according to Dr Tan.

We went back home after the call and planned to visit our little prince in the evening. Today my sore throat seemed to get worse and I knew if I did not get it treated quickly, most likely I'll be down the next few days. As such, I decided to see a doctor in the afternoon. The doctor said that my URTI was quite serious and needed a strong antibiotics. After that, I went over to the library to borrow a dozen of books regarding choosing of baby's name.

At around 5pm, we went to pick up Jerlene before going to Mt Alvernia to see our little prince. We requested to bring the baby out of the nursery to feed him. When Jerlene saw her brother, she was pretty excited. After I gave her a present, which I claimed to be a gift from her little brother, she got distracted and only focused on her present.

After I fed and burped our little prince, he showed me a very satisfied look below.....

After spending about 45mins with the little prince, we reluctantly brought him back to the nursery for further phototherapy. Quite a number of babies were also undergoing phototherapy in the nursery.