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After your baby is born
After birth, your baby will require a lot of monitoring due to the antibodies and the hemolytic disease they cause. It feels so hard now, but please know this is only temporary and your baby will never remember any of this. The baby girl pictured here just had a blood draw through the vein in her arm to monitor her bilirubin and hemoglobin levels and she is sleeping peacefully minutes later!
The University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital has a very helpful handbook for providers (and parents) on what to expect from a baby after they are born with Hemolytic Disease of the Fetus and Newborn (HDFN). We highly recommend it and it can be found here!
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The baby pictured here is receiving phototherapy for high bilirubin levels. She is on a billibed receiving phototherapy from below and also has overhead lights providing treatment from above. You can see she is quite comfortable with her little mask protecting her eyes.
You can use this website from Peditools to help monitor whether your baby may be approaching the need for phototherapy or an exchange transfusion.
If you are in the United States, use this new updated tool for based off of the AAP's new updated treatment guidelines as of 2022.
