Rough Morning

Evelyn Joy’s body threw her a curveball this morning. She has jaundice, which means that she can’t break down bilirubin (some sort of residue from red blood cells) in her blood. Her bilirubin level shot up to a 14.6 this morning from normal levels before, so the nurse brought in a ‘bili-bed,’ or glass bed that shines a blue, UV light on her skin, simulating sunlight. This helps break down the bili-rubin.

Anyway, Evy Joy hated this bed and screamed for what seemed like forever (might have been 30 min). We thought she was hungry and tried to nurse her, but she screamed for a while and didn’t want to latch on. Then, with dad praying hard for her to nurse, she actually did suckle a bit…before falling asleep. We tried to rouse her and get her to suckle, but she wouldn’t. Then she started howling again, so we put her back in the bed.

This has happened four times now and she has only managed to actually nurse for about 10 minutes in the last 5 ½ hours. Poor little girl. She is so tired from crying and from the jaundice that she falls asleep whenever Kristin tries to nurse her. But, if she doesn’t nurse, she doesn’t poop. If she doesn’t poop, she doesn’t get the bilirubin out of her system. And as the bilirubin builds up, she gets more and more tired and wants to nurse less. Catch-22.

Her next feeding is at 11am. We are praying that the bed will break down enough bilirubin in her system to make her active enough to feed for a full 30min, thus starting a positive spiral of feeding, pooping, bilirubin declining more and so on. If this doesn’t happen, Kristin will begin to pump and we will syringe feed Evy Joy to get the digestive system going. We would love to not do this, though, as it could interfere with breastfeeding.

Basically, please pray with us that:
1. Evy Joy would nurse for full 30min at 11am, would poop, and would do that at again and again.
2. Evy Joy’s bilirubin would either fall from 14.6 (normal is 10) or at least not go up. If it goes up, we will be kept in the hospital another day.
3. Evy Joy would take to the bili-bed well so that her mom and dad could get some sleep between feedings.

Thank you for praying with us!