Blue Light Special

I love this kid to death. It's a good thing too...

24 hour check in with the pediatrician... I'm beginning to hate doctors more and more... They give you quite bit of crap for having done things not in a hospital. They tend to not believe you when you tell them that she was born at 4:51PM and by 10:30PM she was sleeping at home. They also want to run a bunch of tests. You see the Tater Jeans have a tendency to make they kid yellow for the first couple of days. You put the kid in the burger warmer and all is well after that. Well because ALT had a little bruising when she was born she started to turn a little squash colored. This of course freaked out the new resident who immediately ordered that we get some labs done in the basement of the hospital. So we head down there.

Well for this test to be performed we needed to place ALT on the table face down and let a tech gather the blood after poking her in the foot. This means that someone had to hold her there... mom can't see her own daughter in pain so it's up to me. I don't handle blood well. It's a wonder to me how on God's green earth I actually survived the birth. Well here I am holding my 1.5 day old girl by the tiny hand and watching as they prick and scoop blood from her foot. It doesn't take long, but mom and dad seem more affected by the event than ALT does. She promptly falls a sleep. The test comes back that the billyruben is a little high, but not dangerous and to take her home and put her in indirect sunlight and feed her more breast milk. (bring on the boob! as ALT's mom would say) Oh and come back tomorrow to do the same test to see if it's going up or down.

We bring her home and put her by the window. That night daddy gets an adventure in diaper changing. ALT has a wet diaper and I open the diaper. Clean up and after wiping the anus I get a wonderful surprise, yep she's pooping. That wouldn't be so bad, but I don't have a diaper under her any more. As I'm being instructed to wipe it up with a wipe cloth she stops and I wait and she farts and I yell "good lord!" to which sends mommy into tears of laughter. More poop and I'm struggling with clean up. Mommy has to go to the bathroom to change her pants as she has managed to pee herself from laughing.

Next day and we go to the lab for a blood draw. This time a green tech gets to do the work. She manages to take 5 minutes which feels like 20 for the father who hates blood and is trying to keep his daughter from crying too hard. I'm starting to pass out and I'm trying to keep from just grabbing the kid and running out the door. Finally she wraps it up and we get to leave. I'm pissed because that shouldn't have sucked so much. They had to milk the foot for a while to get stuff and I hoped that there was enough blood for the test. We go off to the birth center to check in with the nurse there as she has a little more paper work to do.

After the visit with the nurse at the birth center, which is sooooooo much better than the crap at the peds office, we get a message from the peds office that we need to come in. Turns out that they took too long to get the blood and so it had started to clot. This means we would need to prick her again. The doctor wants it right this time so she asks for a full draw from a vein this time... Down at the lab they sense my fear and frustration. This time they let the pro do the work. In and out in 30 seconds. I'm relived and pass out in the lobby afterwards anyway. We wait.. it's still too high, but the doctor doesn't think it's a real problem. Sets up a home treatment with a billy blanket and has it delivered to the house.

We go home, put her in the sunlight again for awhile... now she sits here next to me under a blue light blanket, much like a tanning bed... I'm new at this parenting thing... I'm not sure how any of you mothers and fathers did it with us... this is just crap... I know they joys are coming, but so far... I'm not impressed with doctor care.