Yellow Alert

Caution: this blog entry mentions poop.

One of Robby's first adventures has been getting, and getting rid of, jaundice.

Before we had a baby, I thought of jaundice as something you got as a pioneer on the Oregon Trail.  I now understand jaundice occurs in most babies, especially breastfed ones, and then it goes away after a few weeks.  In that time the baby's liver starts to process the bilirubin (the yellow chemical) and then they poop it out.  However, if baby is not eating "enough" (like sleepy little Robby), and thus is not pooping enough, the bilirubin level can get high enough where it becomes toxic.  If that happened, the doctor would want to shine special lamps on him to dissolve the bilirubin, which I'm sure would not be fun for any of us.

Robby's jaundice never got to a level high enough for any big measures, but it did creep up pretty close, and caused concern with our pediatrician, especially in light of how much weight Robby lost since his birth.  We've found that jaundice and weight loss can be a vicious cycle, because the bilirubin makes him sleepy, making him eat less, making him poop less, building up more bilirubin, making him even sleepier...and so on.  As new parents, exhausted ourselves, it's been very difficult to constantly wake him up and force feed him.  As I belatedly filed for his birth certificate, I secretly considered naming him Rob van Winkle, or alternatively, Billy Reuben Allen.  It's been disconcerting for me, wanting so badly for him to take part in the world, to see his yellow face as a constant reminder that he's not eating enough.  And it's been hard for Anna to negotiate breastfeeding with him - she and Robby have been latching and feeding just great, but when he's awake!  Numbers and measurements and timing and throughput are not the ways in which we want to be relating to our son.  On the plus side, it's enough to make a diaper-changing-averse parent lose all his squeamishness, and cheer at every stool!

Happily, Robby is now eating voraciously (and also doing the rest of the digestion thing...), and no longer looks like baby Maggie from the Simpsons.  The whole process has taken him on some of his biggest forays outside the home so far, from doctor's offices in the sunny Castro, to labs in the Richmond where he's had blood taken, and to newborn centers where he's been weighed and coached on his eating skills.  Our intensive feeding schedule seems to have jump-started his energy, because he's now crying for his food and can be very difficult to put to sleep. We're relieved that he's just gotten back up to his birth weight, in response to which Anna and I tore up our feeding schedule and are now letting him eat when he's hungry, like a human being.