swiss cheese

poor maddux. between standard state screening, blood sugar, and bilirubin testing maddux' heals are starting to look like swiss cheese. and he gets at least one more poke/slice tomorrow morning but, hopefully, that is going to lead to the removal of the light therapy blanket.

it has been so sad to not be able to dress him or really hold him at all this week because of his need to be plugged in round the clock and the 'blanket' needs to be directly against his skin. the worst has been at night when i try and nurse him with the 'blanket' and miracle blanket wrapped around that. he basically has a huge, heavy hose coming out of the miracle blanket (which i credit with two 8 hour nights so far). it makes nursing awkward for both of us. in fact, i really should take a picture of the night time set up...

we try not to take him out of the light blanket except for nursing. we did finally give him his first bath at home last night and matt held him for a while after that - one of the few times he has really gotten to hold him since we came home from the hospital.

with as much trouble as it has been, it has meant that he could be at home instead of in the hospital. since i am type o blood and maddux is type b his bilirubin levels are expectedly high. but then he is also coombs positive which is another antibody adding to the jaundice and associated risks of high bilirubin levels. (at least this is how it was explained to me.) once we get through this initial period he will have no long term effects and this won't ever be an issue again. the risk is if it goes untreated and the bilirubin levels were to get too high.

tomorrow morning we go for what i hope will be the last bilirubin blood test. they poke/slice his heel and then squeeze it and squeeze it for what feels like an eternity to get a large enough sample for testing. he is still a little yellow looking but much, much better. he actually looks a little like he has a farmer's tan from where the 'blanket' had direct contact on his torso. his torso is white/pink and his chest is yellow.

more to come tomorrow. also coming tomorrow are big pop and grandma. love.