It's incredibly hard to be a mother of two. Harder than I ever imagined - mind-blowing, exhausting, overwhelming.

It would probably be easier if I wasn't trying to parent a sick baby, one who's tethered by a cable to a piece of heavy medical equipment.

Gabriel is jaundiced. It's been a long road for the past couple of weeks, and we're still fighting to get to the end of it. A few days after he was born, I noticed that Gabe was looking a mite yellow; Mom, who had practically flown to get here, agreed with me, and when Andrea came to check us out on Thursday, she thought it wouldn't hurt to get him to the doctor to have his bilirubin levels checked. None of us thought it would be much of a problem, though; as opposed to the "typical" very jaundiced baby, he was very alert and engaged, nursing well, and not at all an overly sleepy baby.

The doctor was suitably impressed with how good he looked, too. She confirmed that he was a bit jaundiced, so she ordered the blood draw, but she wasn't concerned. Mom and I took him to the hospital lab, where they poked his little heel, and then we went home and waited for the results.

They called back that afternoon, saying that his bilirubin levels were over twenty milligrams per deciliter, and that they wanted to admit him to the hospital right away. I tried to bargain, asking whether we could get a light-emitting blanket for use at home, but after checking into that, the doctor said that she really wanted to get him hospitalized with his level being so high.

We were in the hospital from Friday evening until Sunday morning. It's all a blur now; Gabe was stripped to his diaper, with little felt-like "sunglasses" stuck to his face, and put into an isolette with lights above him and a paddle-like bili-blanket under his back. It broke my heart to see him in there like that, cut off from sight and from my arms. I was allowed to take him out to nurse him and change his diapers, but we knew that the more time he spent in there, the quicker we could all go home. The nights were awful; I stayed there the whole time, but I couldn't really sleep, especially since Gabe quickly learned that the easiest way to get out of "the box" was to ask to nurse. Inside the box, he'd roll and wriggle his way off the pad so that he needed to be moved back, and he'd paw and yank at his glasses until they came unstuck and needed to be fixed. By the second night, I was almost hysterical with need for sleep, so Mom stayed with me, letting me sleep on the bed in the room and bringing Gabe to me when he needed to nurse.

I was very lucky to have Mom and Dad in town. I don't know what I'd have done with Sam had they not been here The hospital would have let me have him there, and there was a playroom right across the hall from our room, but he got pretty sick of the hospital in a hurry. He was happy to have his grandparents there, though, so he was more than willing to let them assume primary care of him. The first night we stayed in the hospital, and Sam stayed at home with my parents, I sobbed in frustration and disappointment; it was Sam's first night away from me, ever, and it didn't seem fair that it had to be that way. I had one sick child and another child for whom I couldn't care. It was incredible painful, and I hope not to have a situation like that again for a long, long time.

On Sunday morning, Gabe's levels had dropped to 12.8, and they discharged us. We hoped the medical situation was over, though we'd been warned that babies' bilirubin levels can rebound after coming off of phototherapy. Mom and Dad left on Tuesday, and Mom silently noted to herself that Gabe was beginning to look a little yellow again. He had another appointment with his doctor that day, and they did another check. When they called back, it was with the news that his levels had risen back up above sixteen. They checked again the next day, and they were a little lower, but not by much. This time, though, we decided to do the bili-blanket at home to treat him. It's sort of like an elongated paddle that wraps around his midsection and is secured by tape, with a thick cable that then comes out from his belly and attaches to a machine the size of a small boom box. When he's hooked up, the paddle glows a bright blue; we dress him in outfits that snap down the front, and the cable sticks out from between the snaps.

I've been calling him "Glow-Worm."

Anyway, he's nearly three weeks old now, and we're still at the treatment. It certainly does complicate life, though I'm grateful not to be in the hospital, at least. He needs to be on the blanket nearly all the time, other than when I change him or wash him, so I can't really leave the house except to take him to the doctor for draws. Even going for a walk is hard; the more he nurses, the faster he'll recover, so I don't like to be apart from him for even a little while. That means, by extension, that Sam's stuck here when Eric's at work, so he's acting out even more than he might have otherwise done. Mom came up again to help this past week, luckily, bringing my grandma as well, so that helped. I'm starting to get a bit depressed, what with the forced imprisonment. I can't even really carry him around much; we're confined to a short distance from the machine, which is usually either plugged in by the couch or by my bed. Even nights are much more complicated, with the need to juggle the cable while I'm moving him to nurse him.

Things could be much worse, though, and I'm grateful that a little jaundice seems to be our only problem. Gabriel is thriving otherwise, gaining weight like gangbusters. His hands and feet are huge, making me wonder if he's going to be a tall man, though I don't know from where he'd inherit such height.

And he's still very good-natured, though he is beginning to show that he, too, has strong preferences about the way he likes things to be done and the speed at which he wants them done. He doesn't fuss much, except about the occasional gas bubble that burping him through a bili-blanket makes hard to release; he does, though, like to get my attention at night with a sharp scream in my ear instead of the mild whimpers that Sam preferred as a newborn. I'm jittery on top of exhausted, which is a fun combination.

But could I maintain such aplomb as he does while strapped into a sweat-inducing, stiff vest, constantly having my heels jabbed by strangers, with an older brother who liked to poke at my face, and having been stuck in the hospital already in my relatively few days here on earth? Not likely.

We have another draw scheduled for tomorrow. Pray, light candles, whatever, that we'll be down to twelve, the point at which we've been told that we'll go ahead and stop treatment again.