glow-boy

Having a child is awesome in all of the ways you would think--the thrill of new life, the joy, cuteness, happiness and love. New babies smell nice and they make unbelievably precious noises, which is awesome. And maybe the older meanings of awesome come into play here, too. Awesome, as in, respectful of the complexity and wonder of the world around us. Seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time is awesome not just because they are beautiful but because their sheer size puts our humanity and our egos into perspective.

All of this by way of explaining why our son is glowing. No worries--he has a little jaundice and that's pretty common in newborns. He is glowing because he has a phototherapy wrap around his mid-section, which warms and turns back the excessive production of bilirubin out of his liver. The treatment is designed to reduce the yellow skin color that is a symptom of jaundice--and no, Grandma Pat, he is not just yellow because he has Asian ancestors. :) He'll be on the machine for another day or so, and this morning a nurse will be visiting the house to check his progress. We think he's already improving.

What the picture does not show is how connecting Stanley to the phototherapy machine turns him into a little cyborg. Imagine a projector that shoots images onto a big screen, and then imagine what would happen if all that light were shot instead through a small tube and into a thin, plastic, transparent fiber-optic strip. We route this tube from the light-machine up through the snaps of his onesie and into the strip, and, voila, he receives the warmth and light he needs.

So, for now, he's half Stan-the-man, half machine, and he glows a Gatorade-blue.

It's pretty awesome.