Jaylyn's 1st diagnosis

Neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia is quite a mouthful. The first time I had ever heard of it was after Jaylyn was born and it was suspected that she had it. It is so rare that unless you are personally affected, or know someone thats affected, you most likely would never hear of it. Only about 1 in 1000 babies in the world are born with it each year. A simple blood test along with the other routine prenatal screening blood work would have spared us this horrific experience.  I could have gotten treatment while pregnant, and Jaylyn would not have suffered an undiagnosed brain bleed or stroke, if only.... A normal platelet count is 150k-450k. Jaylyn was born with a platelet count of 13k, and then had dropped to 7k. She required a transfusion of iv immunoglobulin and 2 platelet transfusions. She initially responded with an increase in platelets to 27k and then they had dropped again, and so our emotional roller coaster began! We were told she was at risk of brain and gastrointestinal bleeds, so she wasnt allowed to eat and they had ordered an ultrasound of her brain. The ultrasound was "negative" but we had requested an MRI when she was transported from the hospital I had given birth to her at, to Nemours Dupont. We had spent a week at Dupont, checking platelet levels, ruling out possible causes, going over my complex history and narrowing down that I had a platelet incompatibility with Jaylyn. In essence, although our blood types were compatible,  our platelet types were not. I had developed a platelet antibody and it had begun attacking her platelets in utero. So even months before she was born, she had a fight on her little hands, and despite everything,  shes still here! The week in the NICU was extremely difficult but we were told that once Jaylyn's platelets returned to normal, she would be fine. The night before we were told she could go home her platelets rose to 275k! We thought it was all over and were so excited to be able to bring our baby girl home! Needless to say, its far from over and we have really just begun!