Hospital, Day 3

Friday arrived: another day, another pre-dawn visit from a different pediatrician. You see, it was our luck to have both my doctor and Gail's doctor out of town. My doctor had been on vacation all week, so I now know at least 4 of the 6 doctors from her practice. If they didn't stop by the room so early in the morning I'd probably be able to tell you if I really saw 4, or if it was 5. But I digress...back to Gail.

Gail had met her pediatrician on Thursday morning, and then on Friday the pediatrician on call came in nice and early to tell us about how Gail had jaundice, and needed phototherapy to reduce her levels of bilirubin. Having done a lot of reading, I (Bethany) was familiar with this; however, Matthias was not, so he was a little worried. We asked if this would affect our discharge, since we were scheduled to come home Saturday, the very next day. The doctor was reassuring, letting us know that if her levels came down quickly, there should be no problem with us going home the next day.

So Gail got to start her light treatment. She objected strongly to wearing only a diaper, and fussed so much that the nursery nurses said the only way to keep her quiet was on her tummy

with a binky in her mouth:

Now, normally babies are not supposed to sleep on their tummies, they informed us, but said they were allowed to cheat on that rule because they had her hooked up to monitors at all times. The mask you see her wearing was to protect her eyes from the lights.

This meant, of course, that Gail had to stay in the nursery as much as possible, but we got to bring her back to the room whenever it was time to feed her. We had several visitors that day; our pastor stopped by as did a few friends. Since we didn't have Gail with us, it was nice to have company to break up the monotony of the hospital.