Last evening was really, really nice. Just Avadore, LD, Rice and I. We ate some fabulous manicotti and salad while watching Finding Neverland, which is a really enjoyable movie, particularly if you're a writer. Well, at least for me.

For dessert we had this fabulous chocolate cake. It's so chocolately and intense that it's almost black. I had to chop 17 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate to make it. I'm telling you -- it rocked. I'll have to post the recipe one of these days.

After the movie, dinner and dessert, we all went upstairs and read Chapter three of The Magician's Nephew. Each of the chapters run about 6 pages, which is about the length of Avadore's attention span. The book is probably a bit beyond him, really, but he sits and listens and we're all enjoying reading it together.

Then we got ready for bed and went. All except for Rice who went down to his computer.

About midnight I got up to find him and send him to bed. We ended up chatting for an hour. I'm a great influence.

One of Rice's clients (he's coding a program for her) just called him to ask how to copy text. He's mentioned that it's things like that that cause him to die a little bit more inside.

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Part 4

Last time we left Electric Grandmother, she had just been sliced open which resulted in the birth of her second child...

I know I was going to jump right into the recovery room, but I forgot a great detail from when they were closing me up. During the closure, the nurse who held me during the administering of the spinal called the nursery to check on the baby. Quickly, all the staff who was in the OR shouted their bets on what LD weighed. Some of the numbers were fairly small. I smiled. He knew he weighed more than average. I think the nurse guessed something like 8 pounds 8 oz. or something along those lines. I knew she'd win. (Avadore was a big baby -- 9 pounds 2 ounces, I figured his brother'd be a bit bigger, too.) She was told the weight and shouted, "HAH! 8, 8." Then, "20 and 1/2 inches and an APGAR of 8,9." He was healthy.

Because it was a Saturday morning, the recovery room was completely empty and quiet. The staff was one young lady who was very nice, but obviously hadn't been doing the job long. There was a lot of "hmm's" and "I need to call and ask someone" and "I'm not sure, but I think?"

I was hooked up to some morphine that I administered myself. Every 10 minutes I could push a little button and give my self a shot of morphine. I kept pushing the button and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and nothing happened.

The spinal wore off early, so I was feeling just a little bit like I'd been eviscerated with a red hot butter knife.

I commented to the lady (nurse? anesthesiologist? I'm really not sure what she was) that the pain was bloody awful and the morphine wasn't working. "It's just contractions," she told me -- they were normal and would hurt. Yes, there were contractions, and believe me, they weren't comfortable, but they hurt a lot less than the gash in my lower abdomen.

I finally convinced her that it was the incision that was really bothering me. "Hmmm..." she said. "Give the morphine a bit to kick in."

Then she checked my bleeding. "Hmmm..." she said. I was bleeding a lot.

I finally convinced her that the morphine wasn't helping. I didn't get a lot of help. Evidently, in terms of the morphine, it sucked to be me. In terms of the pain scale that western medical health practitioners use, I was at a bloody 9.5. Speaking of blood, I was still, hmmm..., bleeding a bit more than maybe I should? She thought? She left a couple times to go call someone, but hadn't gotten far, I was guessing. She wasn't telling me a lot.

She left to call someone again and came back and starting putting together a hypodermic with something to get my uterus to clamp down a bit more. Pitocin, I think she said, but I was in a lot of pain and wasn't sucking in everything that was going on.

While she was playing with her really big needle, Shawn and Rice came in. Shawn looked at her and then the needle and said, "Would you like me to do that for you?" She seemed very happy to have him do it. We hung out for a bit, waiting for the bleeding to reduce. Shawn left soon after sticking me in the hip with a needle. He did a good job. I hardly noticed. Of course, I was still focusing on the searing incision.

Rice asked me how I was doing. "The morphine isn't working," I said, trying not to cry. Rice mentioned it to the greenie. "Hmm...".

After the bleeding mellowed, they took me to the maternity ward. The gurney needed shocks. I started crying. I hurt and they kept running me over bumps that distinctly did not help at all.

One of the maternity nurses asked if I was okay. I told her I was in a lot of pain; the morphine wasn't working. "It's the contractions," she said. All the nurses agreed. "It's the contractions."

I'm not sure how long it took to convince a nurse that it wasn't the bloody contractions that were causing my tears, but the incision that was ripping me apart. She left to ask the doc what I could have. The answer? Nothing. They couldn't give me anything else. I'd had too much. If they gave me anything else, my lungs would shut down.

Now they tell me.

Finally, she got permission to give me another shot in the hip of something that would help the morphine work. In the meantime, I was to keep pushing the button every 10 minutes or whenever I needed it.

I finally told them to just bring me my baby -- he'd take my mind off the pain.

So they brought him, and though the pain was still excruciating, I felt better.