Overreacting

Part of our maternity coverage covers a home visit from a nurse. She came on Wednesday and was very nice and helpful. Mainly asked questions about how she was feeding, pooping & behaving. She noticed that Elsie was pretty jaundice, something normal for newborns, but I guess it was borderline alarming to her. So she took blood and had a billirubin test run.

It came back later that day at elevated, but not alarming levels. They wanted us to do another test the next day (which was today). We went to Good Sam Western Ridge for the lab work to be done. While there, we noticed Queen City Pediatrics was there. A combination of insecurity about our baby's current situation & doubt of our decision to take Elsie to a family doctor made us consider switching to a pediatrician. We'd heard good things about Queen City, so we visited their office after having her blood drawn.

Here's where things got confusing. We only wanted to meet with them as a consultation to decide whether or not to switch. But in our discussion with the nurse about how she just had blood drawn, she made us a full fledged appointment, which meant I had to get records from the family doctor, which meant she essentially switched doctors at 4 days old, which alarmed the people at Queen City, which really made us feel incompetent. It also meant that the people who WERE managing her jaundice "case" (the home visit people) were no longer allowed to take care of her because we'd visited a ped. Now any follow up visits about the jaundice go through her doctor (now back to the family doctor) and not the people who come to our home. Ay yi yi.

Here's where the lesson was learned: We were insecure in our ignorance, made a snap decision out of fear, and ended up making things worse. Part of it had to do with not knowing that the home care people were essentially taking care of her until our first ped appointment. I also wasn't sure who was actually going to provide the care, so the idea of seeing a ped right away was reassuring. I'm pretty sure sleep deprivation played into it too.

She's still beautiful, still healthy, and when I needed to go into reclusion after a stressful dealing with the medical industry, she was a great snuggler. And THOSE things are what are important.