Inadequate instruction

Yet again I find myself frustrated with the hospital. On Thursday we went to a first appointment with our new pediatrician here. So far I like her. However, we found that Georgia's bilirubin levels were extremely high. They did not send us back in to the hospital (thank god) but gave us more complete instructions for how to get this dealt with at home and made an appointment for follow-up the next morning. Here's the instructions I got and from what source:

Hospital: put her near windows and let her get lots of indirect light

Pediatrician: strip her of all clothes but her diaper and put her in the sunbeam from a window for 10 minutes. Do this 2-3 times per day. Let her recover and get her body temperature back up after each session, so don't do 30 minutes once in a day instead of 3 10-minute sessions.

Which set of instructions seems more useful to you?

Other examples of annoying hospital instructions:
Make sure her temperature measures between 87.6-98.6 and take it twice per day
missing information: when taking under-arm temperature readings, add 1 degree to the number showing on the thermometer

Anyway, we put a lot of effort in with 2-hour feedings and as much sunlight as we could squeeze in and her levels had dropped a bit before the follow-up. In that 24 hours, Georgia gained 7 oz and I lost 2 lbs. I'm currently only 5 lbs over my pre-pregnancy weight. Though you certainly wouldn't guess that to look at me.

Anyway, another follow-up is on Sunday morning and I'm falling asleep typing, so I will post more later.

Getting better every day

( potentially TMI, proceed with caution )

Having worked out the pain management, yesterday was a bit of a better day, and I anticipate it will only continue to improve.

I had to operate on only 1 hour or so of sleep yesterday because of the rigorous schedule of night time feedings and the difficulty in administering said feedings. But the pain meds made it reasonably tolerable anyway. Went to the chiropractor first thing in the morning, and that helped lots with the pain. Then it was rushing off to the pediatrician and dropping in on my ob-gyn. All these medical appointments meant a 5 hour feeding gap for poor Georgia, but she was a trooper and we made it through, even meeting our number of feedings for the day goal despite this gap.

After all that we ate lunch and hung around the house waiting for the test results that would either send us back to hospital, or see us returning for more tests later. Happily it was the latter.

During my stay in hospital I realized the one thing that was still missing from the nursery... a comfy chair. I've decided that the space I was going to put a diaper genie would be much better put to use with the perfect chair. Coincidentally, I'd spotted an ideal candidate at Ikea some weeks before but hadn't at the time known where to put it. Now that I've decided the diaper genie is not a useful item, the prime spot next to the window is available for a chair. I invited Jason along to confirm that this was in fact the right chair for the space, but he wanted to stay home and relax and hates going to Ikea anyway. Jason spent the afternoon feeding Georgia and giving her frequent light therapy while the girls wanted to hit the outlet mall next to Ikea, so off the three of us went.

A half-hour dash through Ikea resulted in most of the things I needed to finish off Georgia's room; the chair, a clock and a laundry hamper. I was also hoping for a white waste basket, but we didn't see those on our whirl through, and I wasn't that interested in searching for it. I can grab that next time I hit the Ikea.

After that it was on to the outlet mall where we discovered they were having a "tax free weekend". Kristi found the crocs she wanted for work (no holes in the top so you can wear them in a hospital setting) and which are apparently not sold anywhere in Canada. All of us managed to find a nice t-shirt or two at Quicksilver. I was able to pick up more dog food at a ridiculous price. It's usually $40 or so plus tax, but I paid $29 including tax (the pet store apparently wasn't playing the no-tax game). And then a final stop at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Company for a box of chocolates to give to the wonderful ob-gyn that delivered me and a treat for Jason for staying home and watching all the kids.

Jason and I spent the early evening sleeping while the girls went to watch the bats emerge from the bridge downtown. The girls then brought us take-out chinese for dinner, which was awesome. We went to bed rather late, and I've been waking for feedings, or like now, hanging around waiting for pill time, but I still feel like I should be able to get some decent sleep hours in.

And that gets me to 6:30 ish, which is when I'm due for my pill, so time to pop that and back to bed for me. Next feeding is scheduled for 8am or whenever Georgia cries, and with her getting better that is finally starting to happen. I think I might ask Jason to bottle that one and get a bit more sleep for myself.