New 'phews

My brother Joe calls my boys his 'phews, short for nephews. And now I have two more nephews. My brother Peter and wife Mindy have baby Daniel, and JB's brother Bart and wife Collette have baby Spencer. 

I recently visited both babies, and they are so squishy and soft and sweet and succulent. In fact, their mothers may have been a little concerned that I kept petting the baby....

I heard from Collette that Spencer has jaundice and needs to be on the light kit at home.  Oh I feel so bad for them.  Memories came flooding back of those early sleep-deprived, emotional, painful, worrisome days of having a newborn being poked and prodded and laying helpless in a glowing bed.

I dug out the photos to text Collette what our experience looked like.  Maxwell, the upper left, was the worst. We had to go back to the hospital and they put an IV in him and everything. Then we had a flatbed of lights for about a week at home.  Upper right is Baby Benny in the suitcase light kit at home for maybe 5 days or so.  Lower left is Andrew getting some sun in his first week of life when he was looking yellowish, but he never got lights. He's also the only one so far with my same blood type, so he didn't have the blood incompatibility.  Lower right picture is newborn James. He also had a suitcase kit, but would not keep the eyemask on so we rigged up some sort of protection.  They also gave us a glowing tube attachment to keep next to his skin while he nursed. I think it was only for a couple days.

I remember thinking with James, "It's OK, we've survived this before, he will get better and I can be strong." But I still cried. The heelpricks are the worst.  So, I guess I'd better prepare myself for the high likelihood that our new baby will need this as well.