Why so yellow?

Jaundice has always been something that I’ve heard about because I actually had it when I was born. The funny part about it was that my mom didn’t know. She actually asked the nurse if I was tan. Given, she was on a lot of medicine because she was preeclamptic, so I guess she gets a pass that time. My mom tells me stories all the time about how we had to stay in the hospital for a week with both of our conditions. What I don’t know, what led to me being born with jaundice?

I just learned that one reason I might have been born with it was because I was premature. Not by much, but apparently it still affected me. I was only about two to three weeks early, so it wasn’t life threatening, but I think it made me more susceptible. Also, since my mom was on a lot of the medication to help her not seize for the eclampsia, I believe that those medications affected both of us. She was sick for a while, and I kind of was too.

I did not realize that jaundice could be a chromosomal disorder. I’ve actually never really known that there were certain things that make certain people most susceptible. I do not understand babies coming out of the womb with jaundice, because that means that something had to have happened while still inside of the mother. Some things make sense to me, such as disease, but what else could it be? Is it a combination between these precursors and a chromosomal abnormalities? Since I had it, will by children be more likely to have it? That’s a scary thought to me because I just want to keep my baby safe. But jaundice has been around for such a long time. The first known instance was in a Chinese book about 1000 years ago. Will we ever be able to completely get rid of it?

Hansen, T. W. (2016, March 4). Neonatal Jaundice. Retrieved September 21, 2016, from http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/974786-overview