Jaundice after 2 weeks

[Danilou22]

Hello,

Hope someone can offer some advice/opinion/knowledge/reassurance.

I have 2 and a half week old twins. They were born at 37+4 naturally and weighed 7lbs and 6lb12.

They went back into hospital on day 3 because they were jaundiced and they were treated with photo therapy and antibiotics.

They were discharged and we have been discharged from midwife care as well. The health visitor came last week and said she could still see they were jaundiced and is coming back to re - assess them this week.

Sometimes they still look a big yellow and sometimes they look perfectly fine. They wake up and take all their feeds during the day (4oz bottles of either formula or expressed breast milk) and they are having more alert and awake periods through the day.

However they are not waking to be fed in the night and last night I forgot to set my alarm and they went from 9pm until 5am! They drank all of their bottle when they did wake up. Lovely for me and great if they are ok but I can't help but worry this is not normal.

Does anyone have any experience of this?

Thanks

They might need assessing for a prolonged jaundice screen, I would ring your community midwife back to ask about this, responsibility of different departments in different areas. Also to quickly review any risk factors for jaundice maybe as unusual to be jaundiced this long if bottle fed? Assuming the health visitor would have asked all the right questions to establish whether they are healthy and thriving (wet and dirty yellow nappies etc) I am sure she had no immediate concerns.

DS1 was full term but had jaundice probably for the first 3-4 weeks. He was an October baby so sunshine was in short supply at the time (therefore suggestions to leave him in a vest next to a sunny window weren't really helpful). He was healthy though and gaining weight, so I just keep bfeeding him and tried to get him in some sunshine when it was bout (not often) and it took 3-4 weeks before the hint of yellow went away.

DS2 was a summer baby and he also had jaundice but it cleared up within 2 weeks (all that sunshine).

Not sure about the long sleeping (DS1 never slept that long until he was 2.5 years...) Part of me would say, embrace it as long as they are gaining weight and doing well, but I know a lot of advice is that babies have small tummies and they should be waking during the night, so the midwife/HV may well advise you to wake them to feed them.

There is no normal for babies. My eldest sister was almost 2 before she slept that long, however my sister that is 18 months younger than her slept for 12 hours a night from 2 days old. Back in the day, nobody woudl wake a sleeping baby, so my mum didn't. So she had an 18 month old that woudl be up all night and a week old baby sleeping through - both 'normal' kids.

And also, in relation to jaundice, I was always told the more you feed the quicker the jaundice goes away, so maybe having the long snoozes at night is making the jaundice last longer?

Ds was jaundiced but otherwise healthy. He was a November baby. I was advised to expose him to as much daylight as possible - if we couldn't get out of the house due to weather we were told to put him near a bright window as much as possible. I was also advised to wake him every 3 hours for a feed because jaundiced babies will sleep and sleep otherwise. It was probably about 3 weeks after he was born that he looked a normal colour.

my 37+1 dd had jaundice. we were also readmitted on day 3 and it lingered a while. she was too sleepy to wake for feeds - vicious circle - and so we were told to wake her to feed every 3 hours. I am bf and she only drank a small bit so then we had to syringe in ebm. knackering. easier if you're bottle feeding and can tell they've had enough. I think it went by 2 weeks ish. are they putting on weight?
congratulations on your twins and what great weights!

it may have been more like 3 weeks till gone, I never could really see the yellow. she's 13 weeks now

DD is ebf and is 10 weeks and still a bit jaundiced. We have been told it takes time to clear in some babies but the HV is just watching it. It is going slowly. As with yours some days she looked more jaundiced than others.

We were told to wake her every 3 hrs to feed to help clear it and did for about 10 days and then she started waking for feeds regularly so we dropped the alarm.

Thank you all for your replies. I think I was just panicking this morning.

The health visitor came and said she was happy that the jaundice has pretty much gone now and to let them sleep through as long as they are waking for their other feeds and putting on weight which they both are.

Thank you so much for sharing your experiences.
Xx