Catch Up

Okay, so I never got around to posting about Eddie's 4 week check up. He's now at 10 pounds, making him quite the porker indeed. He's grown about 2 inches in height. The only bad news is that he's still jaundiced. "Still" jaundiced because he was quite yellow right after birth. The doctor monitored his billirubin levels by doing a lot of blood tests during his first week of life. For the first 5 days the level kept rising and rising but it eventually tapered off after day 5. We're glad he didn't have to use the UV blanket or box. Instead we just made sure to get plenty of breast milk through his system (at that point it was accomplished by finger feeding with a pipette and actual breastfeeding since he wasn't so good at latching on yet).

Here you can see all his pricks:This jaundice is due to his immature liver not being up to snuff to metabolize a protein in my breastmilk. Our doctor said that we might consider stopping breastfeeding for 2 days and giving him formula instead. The break from my milk would give his liver a chance to "catch up" and mature to the point that it would be able to handle my malicious (but delicious) protein. Luckily for us his billirubin level wasn't high enough to need to do that. Instead we'll just let the level come down naturally (but slowly).

Our poor babe has endured a lot of heel pricks and arm vein blood draws...and a urine collection fiasco that involved my taping a baggie around his--ahem--area. The baggie didn't come with directions so I just guessed. I swear I winced when I had to pull the baggie off of his skin.

This past week I had to wear that heart monitor for 24 hours--it turns out that it is hard to wear one of those when it is hot outside (sweaty and you can't take a shower) and when you have to nurse in one. I kept tugging on the wires and worrying that I was going to unplug myself. Keeping a written record of every activity was also a pain. Hopefully the doctor will be able to get whatever information from it that he needs to get my referrals posted to my insurance before too long.

Anyway, I went to Livermore this week, intending to only be there for one night. But then my Volvo's check engine light came on during my climb up the Altamont Pass and started blinking at me. I've never seen a check engine light do that before! To me it seemed like it was saying "Hey idiot! Pay attention to this! You'll regret it if you don't!" At stop lights it was idling really, really roughly and I barely made it to my parents' house.

My dad and I checked the spark plugs (one looked bad) and changed the plug cables (two were bad) but it didn't help. Then Dave and my dad replaced the injector cap and rotor...but still no better. They removed the injectors and we took them downtown to an injector-fixer place. We were hopeful that the injector the corresponds to the bad spark plug would turn out to be bad so we could just replace it...but they were all "perfect" according to the technician. Dang! So Dave and my dad did a compression test on each cylinder and the number one cylinder has no pressure whatsoever. Now my dad thinks that there is at least one bad valve in the number one cylinder. So we're stuck with finding a competent/honest mechanic in Livermore or figuring out how to remove the head (?) of the engine ourselves and taking it someplace to be serviced.

And the worst part (other than having no huge amount of money set aside for this type of car repair...irresponsible, I know) is that we're stuck driving Dave's crappy, made-of-plastic Saturn. Bah! I HATE HATE HATE the Saturn. The seats are tortuous and it is so low to the ground that it is hard to get into and out of. Plus the baby seat only fits in the back middle seat, which makes it hard to load or unload Eddie.

We also left our camera in Livermore so there will be no pictures for a while, which is a shame since we did some photoshoots in Livermore with my dad's fancy photography lights and got some good shots of Eddie with me and my dad.