Arietta Bennet Steinbrook was born at 8:52pm on June 15th (clearly she wanted to be her daddy’s Father’s Day present). Everything has been looking good post birth but she was starting to develop some jaundice so they did some additional testing. Arietta and I have different blood types and because of that, her red blood cell count is low and her bilirubin is high. They started her on phototherapy last night and while it is helping, it does significantly change how things were looking on Monday morning when we were told we would likely both be discharged Tuesday morning.

Between the week of early labor where we were in and out of the hospital, now what’s looking like at least a full week in the hospital, if not longer, and scheduled time off for bonding and adjusting at home, the funds we thought we were going to have and be able to save before she arrived is no where near where we thought we’d be. My maternity leave had to start early and my partner had to call out several times to take me to the hospital and be my support. He’s been able to go in for short amounts of time and also DoorDash to try and help but obviously he doesn’t want to be away too long.

While we hope a lot of assistance isn’t needing, I’m creating this fundraiser out of an abundance of caution to make sure that while Arietta gets better and stronger, we can focus on taking care of her and ourselves and still be able to pay all of our bills as due dates approach. Any little bit helps immensely! Thank you