Saturday 10 December 2005

...and back again!


Well, we’re back in hospital – hopefully for just a few days, but it is very frustrating none the less!!
On Friday morning, Janel was not showing much interest in feeding and looked as if she had become much more jaundiced during the night. By happy coincidence, the area midwife paid her first postnatal checkup that morning, and she agreed that she was rather yellow and suggested we follow it up with the hospital, so we took her back to St Thomas’ where she was readmitted pending some blood tests.
The tests appararntly showed a slightly elevated billirubin level, so she was put under lights again at lunchtime on Saturday, in the same sort of box as last Friday – with the same response. It is just too cold for her and she began to scream. We managed to convince one of the midwives that we weren’t going to put her through that and she found us an incubator which worked much better.
We saw a doctor later that afternoon (at last) and she said that while Janel could come off the lights (as the raise in the level was not significant), there was some concern that she might have an infection, and that they were going to put her on a course of antibiotics while the blood cultures that would confirm this were grown – better safe than sorry, but it does mean that she will be in hospital for at least another 48 hours, and Nicole with her…
So here we are again – staring across the river at Westminster Palace, and wishing we were at home. Seriously though, it is best to get these things out of the way, and I would rather be inconvenienced for a few days than run the risk of having a seriously ill baby in a week’s time. Still, I’d rather have her at home…

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