Our third child, Everly Virginia Palmer, was born on May 29, 2019 weighing in at 7lbs 11oz and measuring 20in long.
Nothing could have prepared us for what happened next. On Thursday, May 30th we brought home our perfectly healthy baby, and then had to hand her back to doctors just over a week later.
Everly was discharged from the hospital the day after her birth with slight jaundice, but we noticed her skin tone continued to yellow over the next week. She didn’t display any other concerning symptoms – she was alert and happy, eating well, and having good diaper output. But someone somewhere was looking out for us, and my gut told me she needed to be seen before her next appointment which wasn’t until Wednesday, June 12. I took her into her pediatrician for a walk in weight check on Friday afternoon and asked about her coloring. They changed the weight check to a sick visit and a nurse practitioner evaluated her and suggested we go to the emergency room since they couldn’t get labs back before the weekend. At this point, it felt like a mild but necessary inconvenience. Kevin and I drove her straight up to the children’s hospital in St. Pete. We didn’t have to wait long before being taken back to a private room. Her nurse told us they’d need to put in an IV to extract blood to check her bilirubin levels (this is what causes jaundice). At that point, we thought that would be hardest part. We were so wrong.
It took about an hour for her results to come back. Once they did, we were told they were “pretty high” and the NICU team would be coming soon to take her upstairs. When I nursed her and held her before handing her over, I had no clue I wouldn’t get hold her again for nearly 15 hours, or nurse her for over 30.
When we got up to the NICU there were probably a dozen people waiting for her. There were 3 doctors, including a woman who we can only describe as her fairy godmother – Dr. McCarthy. She told us her bilirubin level was 31, which is dangerously high and we needed to get it down as quickly as possible. They begin to worry about brain damage with levels higher than 20, and we were well beyond that point. She needed a blood transfusion immediately. They prepped her quickly and miraculously, Dr. McCarthy was able to get an arterial line through her umbilical cord (which had already fallen off days prior), which is practically unheard of for a 9 day old baby. The alternative would have been to surgically open a vein. We were immediately reassured by her skills that we were in good hands. There are not adequate words to thank a person for literally saving your child’s life.
That first night was a whirlwind. She had two blood exchanges (where doctors literally pumped her blood out of her body while simultaneously pumping donor blood in). The first exchange was just red blood cells (the blood product they were able to get from the blood bank quickest), and the second was whole blood. After the transfusion, she was laid on a UV light blanket, and placed under two overhead lights to begin phototherapy. By Saturday morning her bilirubin level was down to 9. It spiked back up a few hours later to 14, but we have seen nothing but a downward trend since.
Over the weekend they ran dozens and dozens of tests, she had to have 2 additional blood transfusions, 3 IV lines, x-rays, EKG, a (failed) spinal tap, antibiotics, antivirals, and continuous light therapy. All of this meant we weren’t able to hold her and I wasn’t able to nurse her while we waited to find the cause of her hyper bilirubinenemia. Spoiler alert: we still don’t know why this happened.
We had no idea how close we were to losing her completely. But our girl is stronger and feistier than we even realized. We have faced the unimaginable together, and together we can do anything.
