Max Update

Thursday night we realized that Max was looking more yellow and I took him that evening for a bilirubin test (skin and blood) and the numbers were on the high side for his age. His skin test was 18.8 and the blood work was 17.8. Since he was eating fairly well and often, we were sent home with the instructions to wake him every 2.5 hours to nurse and came back in the morning for another round of tests. Those numbers were 19.7 for his skin and 18.5 for his blood. Since he was another day older and hopefully this was the peak day, we were sent home with the same instructions - to nurse him every 2.5 hours around the clock. This became increasingly more difficult as the night wore on; he's just so sleepy all the time. He ended up going 4 hours in between, twice, just because I couldn't get him to do it any sooner, and even then he wouldn't eat much. This morning we had a nurse home visit and although his skin test was down to 13.7, evidently a few days after doing the light therapy, the skin test isn't always accurate, so we went back to the hospital this afternoon for yet another blood test. Poor guy has had more heel pricks than I can count. That blood test was 18.0 - down .5 from yesterday. So although we are going down, not at a very fast rate, so it's no wonder he's still so sleepy. We also discovered today that although he'd gained 2 ounces since his discharge, he has now lost those 2 ounces and is back to his discharge weight: 7 pounds 2 ounces. I am trying hard to not get frustrated with nursing - right now he never wakes up to tell me he's hungry so I spend time trying to get him to wake up, then it seems it takes him forever to get latched on, then he's not all that enthusiastic once he is eating, so that takes a long time as well. By the time we're done, it feels like it's time to do it all over again! I know it'll get better and hopefully he'll get more alert as his jaundice dissipates, which will help with the nursing. We'll probably go back up to the hospital nursury a couple of times this week just to get weighed, so that I can have some peace of mind that he's doing ok with nursing. Here are some pictures from the last few days:
He really is good at finding his fingers or thumb, although he tends to scratch himself:

He really likes his puggy too! (He's undressed because he was "sunbathing" in the window to help bring his bilirubin down.)After his bath, his hair is very fluffy:One of the few times we've seen him awake - he was content to look around while we all talked to him. It only lasted a few minutes. (He's got a milk moustache.)