On the day we were scheduled to check out of the hospital, they told us that his billirubin levels were “borderline” and that they wanted to send us home with a billi blanket. Great, no problem. But, they said that the light was actually supplied by a 3rd party rental company, and that we’d have to wait for it to be delivered. It was about 10am when we started waiting. (We were due to check out at about 11). We waited and waited — in fact, didn’t actually leave the hospital until almost 6pm! And, when the delivery guy arrived, he was completely clueless about how to use the thing. He didn’t deliver it with its “cover” and actually gave us incorrect instructions on how to use it. All the while, the hospital staff and he were saying “you need to keep your baby in this 24 hours a day.” Are you kidding? We need to keep our 3 day old breastfeeding baby hooked up to a hard plastic light with a 3/4″ plastic tube hanging out of it all day long? How do we change his diapers? How to we feed him? How do we keep the thing on? (It had no straps, velcro, or similar stuff to keep it in place). No one demonstrated what to do.

So, we get home, we eat dinner with friends, and we bring him upstairs to give it a try. Screaming, screaming, and more hysterical screaming. Then, the flailing begins and the hours of dilligent swaddling, shushing, rocking and comforting culminate in the entire thing falling right off. Just to give you a feel for what this thing was like — its about 14″ long, 4″ wide, and was made out of a stiff plastic that just wanted to be flat. Oh, and it had a giant 4 foot long tube coming out of one end. So, we try swaddling him, we try putting it under his clothes (for about 30 seconds, that is) and we try a few other things and realize that there must be something we’re missing. We hadn’t gotten the fabled “covers” yet (to be delivered the next day) and we had a doctors appointment in the morning, so we decided to just wait and have the doctor show us how to use it.

So, morning comes, we head to the Dr.’s office, with the kid & billi blanket it tow. He tells us we need to be using it 24 hours a day. We say “please show us how to use it — this thing is totally impossible to use.” His response? “Its the rental equipment providers job to instruct you on how to use the device. I’ve not seen this model before and I can’t help you.” ARE YOU SERIOUS? Let it be said that now that the jaundice is over, we won’t be returning to this doctor. We were furious.

So, we get home, and with new resolve and the help of the “Miracle Blanket” we actually get him all wrapped up and sleeping in the billi blanket. Whew! Do we keep it on during feedings and his awake time? No way. Its just not realistic, in fact, just not possible. He screams bloody murder during every waking moment in that thing, and we weren’t going to subject him to that. I’m not even sure that feeding while that thing was wrapped around him was possible, he was so hysterical. So, we do the best we can, he sleeps with the light, and has a blood test the next day. Yay! His billirubin had gone down!

We spent the next 2 days doing the same thing, wrapping with the Miracle Blanket and the Billi Blanket at the same time while he sleeps. Other times, we gave him a break. By Friday (4 days of phototherapy) his billirubin levels were low enough that the doctor said we didn’t need to use the “blanket” anymore! Hooray for Isaac!

The moral of the story?

Although the design of the “Wallaby 3″ phototherapy blanket by Respironics sucks, it worked.
Apria Healthcare appears to be full of a bunch of incompetent morons.
Our first attempt at picking a Pediatrician failed miserably.
Isaac is healthy!

P.S. As an engineer, I’d like to leave some feedback for Respironics, the makers of the Wallaby 3 phototherapy blanket:

1. Include written instructions with the unit. Detail exactly how to wrap the baby securely with the light, using several different types, shapes, and styles of blanket, onesie, etc.
2. Don’t just provide a “tissue paper” cover. You need to manufacture an entire cloth swaddling blanket that fits around the phototherapy light and makes it easy to wrap the kid in the light. At least 2 of these should be included with the unit.
3. Make a longer cord! The existing cord length (~4 feet) was barely enough to reach from the power supply to the baby. I’d say 8 feet long — long enough to reach from the power supply to the crib and to a nearby chair used for breastfeeding.
4. Make the cord easier to detach & reattach. I know you think its simple the way it is, but you haven’t tried using it at 2:30am when you’re running on 2 hours of sleep.
5. Do some user testing! Its so clear to me that this is a piece of “technology” and not a user tested device. Do some user tests, and do whatever your test subjects tell you.

Here are some links to chew on:

Stephen
Andrea
Vlad

Well, the answer is that you feed the names into the double metaphone algorithm, write the results to a berkeley db4 database, and then use the levenshtein edit distance functions to sort names based on their length and sounds. And thus, I present you with…

The Ultimate Baby Name Explorer

Enjoy!