Abby got to meet all of her immediate extended family who currently reside in this country while she was in the hospital.  (She will be meeting her Uncle Timothy at a later date, when he comes back home from Germany!)

We got to go home on Saturday afternoon (after getting another bath, which wasn’t quite as terrible as the first one).  Abby wore her cute outfit she got from Grandma & Grandpa Helfinstine at Christmas.  The onesie says “I love Daddy.”  She was really excited about the hat I put on her…the flower was bigger than her head!  So we decided to swap out the flower for a smaller one, amid gales of laughter from everyone in the room.  Saturday was also the day that marked 38 weeks of pregnancy (if she hadn’t been born yet, of course!)

Sunday was spent relaxing at home, along with thinking deep thoughts while napping.

On Monday, we went to the clinic to get Abby’s heel poked to check her bilirubin, since she was our little yellow baby by then. (And she was cranky, which isn’t normal for her.)  Grandma and Grandpa Helfinstine brought Bones home, but then we got the call from the doctor saying we needed to go back to the hospital because her bilirubin was a 19.6!  Poor Bones was confused by (a) Abby’s noises and (b) coming home and then having everyone leave again!  After David brought us to the hospital, he went back home to get Bones and bring her back to his parents’, meeting his dad halfway.  Bones got an extended vacation with her cousins!

When we got to the hospital, Abby’s bilirubin was at 19.9!  The nurses told us Abby would need to be under the lights at least 24 hours, and we should plan on her being there for two days.  Poor baby girl’s weight had dropped to 5 lbs, 5.6 oz due to the bilirubin causing her to be too drowsy to eat, which then causes her bilirubin to go up (it goes out the way other things go out…into the diaper), so she didn’t eat, so it went up, etc.  She had an overhead light, a side light, and a biliblanket to start with, along with an IV.

She got to hang out under the lights around the clock, coming out every three hours to eat and get her vitals checked.  They took away the side light on Tuesday morning because her bili had come down to 13.1, and her IV came out as well (although the hook up stayed on just in case).

She was nice and snuggly warm in there, and she kept posing like she was at the beach on an inner tube!  Abby normally doesn’t like being naked (good girl!), but she was okay with it in the isolette!

On Wednesday morning, her bilirubin was down to 8.1, so we would get to go home that day!  She was approximately back up to her original discharge weight (5 lbs, 13.8 oz) and was much happier and much less yellow!  We were very glad to go home again, especially since our accommodations the second time around were not what they were the first time:  we had a room in maternity the first night, which we got kicked out of the next morning, and then they found us a room in another part of the hospital around dinnertime, which we were also kicked out of the next morning!  We were especially ready to go home by Wednesday since we went to the hospital (the first time) the previous Wednesday evening; it was really fun to spend 5 out of 7 nights in the hospital…

Wednesday night, Auntie Kristen came over for a bit and got to help give Abby her first bath at home!  It was originally scheduled for Monday, but our trip to the hospital changed those plans.  Abby thought her bath at home was a little better than at the hospital, but she wasn’t too sure about it.

Abby was also not sure what to think about the photo shoot she was subjected to after her bath!

Thursday was Abby’s one-week birthday!  We celebrated with funfetti cupcakes (with pink frosting!) and more pictures!  [And Papa Murphy’s with the s’mores dessert pizza for Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma Haugrud!]  Abby celebrated by showing off her skills at spinning herself around.