Eventually, the shot in the hip that was to help the morphine kick in did its job and things mellowed out quite a bit. Of course, LD helped out. A lot. I studied his black hair and swollen eyes. Sometimes he'd cock one or both of them open to reveal the most beautiful deep slate grey irises. He was beautiful.

About this point, we had the final, "What are we gonna call this kid?" discussion, which was short and painless. It was a give a little and take a little on both parts.

Then I decided to feed him. I said, "Hey -- you hungry?" and he said, "You bet. Right here, lady." And that was that. I kid you not.

In case you're unfamiliar with such things, breastfeeding isn't necessarily the easiest thing in the world to accomplish right off the bat, for mothers or babies. You'd think it is, but it's not necessarily so. That's why there's people like lactation consultants; all sorts of things can go wrong.

It took Avadore a week to learn to eat. Honestly, he didn't really eat for a week. He went down from 9 pounds 2 oz. to something like 7 pounds 12 oz. Because of the shape of his tongue and the location of his soft palate, it took a lot to teach him. This all really is another story for another time, but let's just say there were a lot of sleepless nights where I tried and tried to feed a starving, screaming baby and the only supplement (due to the gluten issue) we could give was glucose water, and of course my milk took forever to come in, so he just wasn't eating. Anyway, he only took a bottle a couple of times, so that was mostly out. Anyway, it sucked.

So yeah, LD just latched on and that was that. Easiest thing in the world. It's like he read the manual. But it's like he read the manual for lots of things. He held his head up pretty much right off the bat, not quite a week after birth he was rolling over on to his side and then stomach via intense waving of his legs and arms. Stuff like that.

The night after the surgery, after the pain had significantly abated, the nurses wanted me to sit up. So I sat up, and then I stood up, and then I walked around a bit, straight and tall. The nurses were suprised; so was I. Last time, they had me walking around the next day and I had to walk backwards and stooped due to the pain and incision and slashed muscles. I was a lot healthier this time, and less exhausted.

LD was born on a Saturday, and on Tuesday we were up north with my in-laws for a week and a half, where we had a lovely time.

Actually, that's not true. I suspect you can imagine what kind of time I had.