My little Glow Worm

About 24 hours after Izzy was born, she became jaundice. Basically this is the liver's inability to break down bilirubin. Bilirubin is a substance made when the body breaks down red blood cells. Overall her skin tone was slightly yellow...as if she had a tan. Initially I just thought she got Ben's olive color skin tone, but I guess that wasn't the case.

When they first tested Izzy, her levels were in the high-risk zone. So she was ordered under the lights. I think the whole issue was more traumatic for me than it was for Izzy. At the beginning her incubator was in the nursery, which was a bummer because it's hard to watch your baby from afar.

On the first day, I kept taking my camera with me to the nursery so I could keep looking back at pictures to calm myself....

After the next 24 hour testing period, her levels increased again, so I was really emotional and probably (definitely) starting to drive the nursery staff insane. So they moved Izzy, her incubator and the three lights into our hospital room. I told the nurse that watching her was better than watching tv.

Izzy did really well in the incubator when she was in our room (the nurses reported otherwise while she was in the nursery)...

Well, she was pretty good...I kept catching her with the temperature monitor stuck to something other than herself...or with her mask off her face. She was just so darn cute. I wish I would have kept the mask...

Her levels ended up going up again, but we learned that the levels also correlate with amount of time passed since birth. So eventually she got to a point that our pediatrician was comfortable with her going home. So they finally let us go home, with follow up blood work and a trip to the doctors office the next day! We were so relieved.

Here is our precious little girl on the day we got to go home! I couldn't resist her outfit even though it was huge on her!