Thank you to everyone who left comments to welcome Ellie! I will answer each one personally as soon as I get brave enough to check my email – I have a fear of over filled in-boxes. Did you know that baby books don’t include special pages for blog comments? Luckily, I’ve got a book that has three rings so I can add all the scrap book pages I want. That is what we call Displaying Adaptability.

The cats have displayed a remarkable amount of adaptability of their own.

Cats love babies. It’s a fact.

Several people have asked for more details about Ellie’s arrival. Below is the short version of the events from Sunday, February 17 through Wednesday, February 20. If you aren’t interested (doesn’t hurt my feelings at all – there is hardly any knitting), just scroll right on through and look at the pictures. Before you go, I have one small piece of advice: a casual approach to preparedness is what the Universe calls a Gotcha Opportunity.

I fully expected to be sent home when we showed up at the hospital (as a precautionary measure), but it turns out that I was leaking amniotic fluid (ewewewewew) so I had to stay. Luckily, I had brought my intended hospital knitting with me (Michael had to go home for everything else – but we live right across the street so that isn’t as big of a deal as it sounds). The nurse was very understanding about running my IV way high up on my arm so that I could knit.

Socks for my doctor (this amuses me greatly).

Then came 18 hours of sitting around. More than half of those hours included pitocin and none of it included painkillers (don’t worry, I didn’t need them) with absolutely 0 progress and some weird baby heartbeat things that interfered with the knitting (oxygen and side-lying were called for at that point). The doctor came in to assess the situation and said to the nurse, “How long has Baby’s heart rate been tachy?” And that was that: abdominal surgery for me and a tee-tiny IV to fill Ellie with antibiotics.

Ellie resents being tethered to equipment as much as I do.

What followed that was a seemingly miraculous recovery on my part (according to every nurse there). The next morning I was functioning like an ordinary person (a person without a hole in her stomach) and the morning after that Ellie’s blood tests came back clean and we all got to go home.

We were both really happy to go.

That was Wednesday. Today is Saturday. Except for the obnoxiousness of a glued up incision, I feel better than I have in weeks and weeks.

I also seem to be suffering from some kind of Post-Partum Nesting Instinct. I feel compelled to finish up everything that I had planned for Monday and didn’t get to do. Not the least of which is finishing at least one of three blog posts (I’ve got to do the other two tomorrow) – I’ve been writing this one since yesterday morning. Turns out, babies are an enormous time-suck. Who knew?

PS She is named for my great grandfather’s sister. Aunt Eleanor was (and really still is) one of my most favorite people of all time. “Airey” is a very old family name that my mother and I also share. The Ivey is self-explanatory.