Newborn Jaundice
Before my baby boy was diagnosed with Jaundice, I had never heard of it in babies or only heard of it in alcoholics.
When James, my son was born, he was very quiet, never really cried in fact he didn’t cry for his first feed we had to give him something 6 hours after he was born because he wasn’t crying for it. I never heard James cry for about 3 weeks after he was born.
Jaundice also created problems with breastfeeding as well. James due to the Jaundice was very tired and just wanted to sleep, which made breastfeeding very difficult. He would fall asleep on my breast because it was too much hard work for him to suck on the breast so this meant I had to hand express and give it to him in a syringe making it easier for him to get food without using up the little energy he had.
Jaundice is actually quite common in babies but only about 5% of those with Jaundice require treatment for it. If your baby is a bit dark skinned (orange or yellowy), very tired and lacking in energy and a bit yellow in the eyes the midwifes will do a quick test to work out the levels of bilirubin in the blood, this test is also part of the new-born tests your baby will have before they are allowed home.
Bilirubin is a yellow substance produced with red blood cells, which carry oxygen around the body and are broken down. A new-born’s liver is still not fully developed when they are born so it is less effective at breaking down bilirubin from the blood.
Most babies who have Jaundice do not need treatment as their liver becomes more developed and better at breaking down the bilirubin by the age of 2 weeks. Jaundice is very common in babies and around 6 in every 10 babies develop it but only 1 in 20 of those who have jaundice require treatment for it. A baby will only require treatment for jaundice if they have a high number of bilirubin in the baby’s blood. This is because there’s a small risk that the bilirubin could pass to the baby’s brain and cause brain damage. There are two main types of treatment which is used in hospitals to help reduce the levels of bilirubin in the baby, these are phototherapy and an exchange transfusion.
My baby had phototherapy which is a special light that shines onto the skin which alters the bilirubin into a form that can be easily be broken down by the baby’s underdeveloped liver. James was originally on a mat which had these lights and that’s normally the first step to treatment. He then had a blood test 24 hours after being on the mat and this came back with still high levels of bilirubin in the blood, so he was then moved onto a stronger light which just went over the crib. When a baby is on the mat they can be wrapped in a blanket and cuddle with the blanket and light whereas when they go under the bigger light, they can’t be removed from it. They need to go under the light with no clothes on, a mask and be left unless they are being feed or changing their nappy. This was absolutely heart-breaking for me and my husband and James hated it as well. There wasn’t really anything that we could do to make him feel better because he just needed to stay under the light. He stayed under this light for 12 hours and then he had another blood test which found that the levels of bilirubin had gone down slightly but enough for the light to be taken away. We then had to spend another 12 hours without any lights and another blood test to see if the levels of bilirubin had stayed down or if they had increased.
Thankfully for James the levels had stayed pretty much the same which meant that we could go home after 5 very long nights in hospital.
I like to think that I was pretty knowledgeable about babies and things that happen or may not happen, but Jaundice was something I had never ever heard about. I think this is something that should be spoken to mothers about just so they know what to expect.
You can imagine how scary this all was for me a first-time mum who’s just had a pretty traumatic birth. I like to think that me and my husband dealt with it pretty well, but I don’t really think that we did to be honest. We had never heard of this thing before our new-born baby had been diagnosed with it and we were worrying about what would happen to him.
There was also all of the blood test that he had as well that worried us and upset us. For James’ Jaundice he had a total of 5 blood tests in the space of 3 days only being 4 days old himself. The doctors always took him away into another room to do the blood tests, but we could still hear his scream from our room.
When we did get home, it took nearly 3 weeks for James’ Jaundice to disappear and for him to have more energy and finally cry like a new-born should.
I owe a lot of credit to the NHS website for getting my information. If you feel like you need more information head over to https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/jaundice-newborn/
I hope that this information helps someone, thankfully now my little boy hasn’t been affected long term by the Jaundice and it did go away.