The Learning Curve

Ryan and I are learning lots of new things about being parents. We thought we'd share a couple of those things with you...

First, much to our dismay, we learned that a baby isn't supposed to sleep almost every minute of his life that he isn't eating. This was a real bummer for us. We kinda thought he should cry a little more and be awake just a little more, but we were enjoying the peace and quiet we just thought we were blessed with. Sleeping is a big part of their routine, but being lethargic 90% of the time...not so much.

The next thing we learned, again, to our dismay, is that babies should be going through dirty diapers at an amazing rate. Our little munchkin wasn't having anywhere close to the 6-8 wet diapers in 24 hours like he should, but we were just counting that as another blessing...not realizing that it meant he might be having some issues...

The last thing we've learned is that aren't supposed to look like they have one of those bad fake spray on tans. Since we've never been parents and haven't really been around little babies, we really have no point of reference in which to compare and contrast our baby with...but we were pretty sure his skin color wasn't supposed to match the "mango tango" Crayola crayon.

All of that led us to the Internet (what people ever did before it is beyond me...) to look up these symptoms and that's when we learned what jaundice is and how it decreases the number of dirty diapers, and how it can make babies really tired and make their skin turn colors. I had been calling him "sweet cakes" but I guess a more appropriate name would have been "carrot cake". =)

So, like all first time parents, we immediately loaded up the car and headed straight for the doctor's office. After a few tests, we found out that he did have jaundice and that is was already "severe" enough to admit him to the hospital for a short stay of light treatment and observation. We also learned during this time that it's actually not an uncommon thing for babies, especially ones that are breastfed, and that as long as it's caught and treated, it's an easy thing to manage and recover from.

So after a 48 hour stay in the hospital and some bright light therapy, we've come down 8 points on the scale - we're eating like a champ, pooping and peeing like a rockstar and getting rid of that fake tan. We still have a little ways to go with it, but we're headed in the right direction and that was good enough for the doctors to let us come home.

The other thing that I have learned in this is that Ryan didn't find the lullaby I chose to sing to him as I was feeding him nearly as funny as I did...I just thought the lyrics "they call him mellow-yellow" seemed very appropriate at the time. =)