Friday, September 14, 2007

Jaundice v. Sleep

Vivi's doctor is afraid of jaundice. The doctor has counseled that we "wake up" Aviva at night to feed her. Apparently she has never heard of the well-known maxim, "never wake a sleeping baby." Kristin and I would really rather deal with a baby with jaundice than deal with a baby that's not sleeping because we're waking her up. If Aviva wants to sleep for 5 hours in a row, without a feeding, we're going to let her.

So, I have a poll for all experienced parents. Very simply: who's crazy, (1) Aviva's Dr. or (2) Abram and Kristin.


**Editor's note: upon reading the above entry, Kristin voted for (2), but really only thinks Abram is crazy. Kristin wants it clear that she would not rather have a baby with jaundice than a baby with bad sleep habits. She "claims" that Abram is prone to hyperbole.

7 comments:

Delsa said...

I'm with you- let her sleep and take her out in the sunshine often during the day. I'm all for sleep.

Unknown said...

That's really the point -- there are so many other things you can do to avoid jaundice, i.e. putting her in the sun, that there's no need to wake her up.

Aly said...

I can imagine that if I ever had a baby who slept, I want to encourage that!

Whit said...

Hudson was jaundice, scary... he was really bad. What is her bilirubin count? Sunshine works great, but feed her like a maniac... it cleans out the jaundice in her system. The more she pees the less jaundice - I am sure you know all of this! But at night, one feeding isn't going to "hurt" her; in conclusion her doctor is somewhat crazy on this issue. Let the little one sleep. But feed her a lot during the waking hours!

Jeff and Larissa said...

I'm definitely NOT an experienced parent, but I'm personally all about the sleep. For me, sleep is sanity and it's not that healthy for a baby to have an insane mom. :)

Jeff and Larissa said...

This is Jeff posting. Granted I am not a pediatrician and I am one of those kooky osteopaths but we have done plenty of study on jaundice and I don't know why he thinks that waking the baby to feed her will prevent it. If jaundice develops after 24-48 hrs then it is termed physiologic jaundice and RARELY is anything to worry about. I vote for let the girl (and the parents) sleep.

EFN Newsletter said...

Let's hear it for the osteopaths! We took Vivi to our regular pediatrician today and she said there's no way we have anything to worry about.

p.s. Tough game on Saturday, huh?