
The treatment has no side effects other than the temporary difficulty of maternal separation. Similar to the ones in your local tanning salon, these lamps convert excess bilirubin into a less toxic compound. Moderately jaundiced babies can be treated in the first few weeks of life with ultraviolet lamps. This condition, however, is extremely rare and completely different from most cases of infant jaundice. Most of the concern about jaundice results from the fact that extremely high levels of bilirubin can be toxic, notably to the brain. This temporary accumulation of moderate bilirubin levels is usually harmless. Also, a large hematoma on the scalp caused during delivery can predispose to jaundice, because as it heals, the blood it contains is processed into the bloodstream as bilirubin. For example, when a mother and her baby have different blood types, the postpartum destruction of red blood cells could be greater, resulting in higher amounts of bilirubin and hence a rather dramatically yellow baby. Certain factors may exacerbate the process. In some newborns, the condition is more pronounced.
#Tinge of jaundice skin
While this process is happening, however, some of the bilirubin seeps from the bloodstream into the skin tissues, including the whites of the eyes. Their hemoglobin content is shed into the bloodstream and eliminated in the form of a yellow compound called bilirubin, which the infant slowly excretes via urine and stools. With a baby’s first breath, those extra red blood cells are destroyed.

Life in the womb requires about a third more red blood cells than adults have in order to transport oxygen from the mother’s blood.

The scientific mechanism of jaundice is simple. In fact, it’s common, so common that most of the alarm it causes doctors and parents of jaundiced babies is unwarranted. Jaundice, the condition of having yellowish skin, is not a rare occurrence in newborns.
