Two-month hospital stay for Brown baby

Gordon Brown's newborn daughter, Jennifer Jane, will have to remain in hospital until February because she is suffering from jaundice.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer said yesterday that he was seeing an improvement in his daughter's health, but admitted that he had found the day of her birth, when she was delivered at 2lb 4oz after an emergency Caesarean section, "difficult".

Mr Brown, 50, spent an hour and a half with his wife, Sarah, at the hospital in Fife yesterday. He said that since the birth everything had gone "smoothly" and that Jennifer seemed to be improving steadily. "She's doing a lot better today, but she will be in hospital until the middle of February, almost two months," he said.

Doctors confirmed that the Chancellor's daughter was suffering from jaundice, a common condition in premature babies. She is being kept under a special ultraviolet lamp, which means that neither the Chancellor nor his wife can hold her as often as they would like.

Dr Laura Stewart, consultant neonatalogist at Forth Park Maternity Hospital, said: "Now the baby is receiving treatment for jaundice it is important she stays under phototherapy lamps, so she won't be coming out for prolonged periods of cuddling at present."

Jennifer, who was due in February, is likely to stay in an incubator until she completes her full nine-month term. She is being fed by drip to increase her weight.

Mr Brown is the first Chancellor to father a child in office since Gladstone in 1854.