Home at last

I'm home! I discharged myself from hospital on Saturday, to grumblings from a crabby gynaecologist and encouraging murmurs from the nursery staff, who could scarcely find fault with the lad's health, having witneesed his prodigious powers of suction. And matchless beauty, of course.

I had been happy to remain in hospital until saturday, basking as I had been in the warm glow of the double room where Jacob was born til friday, followed by a peaceful night in a single room. All this changed on Saturday at 12 noon when another new mother was moved into the bed next door, accompanied by no less than ten of her Southern Italian relatives, each with a differently jarring mobile phone ring tone set to LOUD, parcels of goodies and loads of bad advice for the new mother, also delivered LOUD. "What? You haven't put your stomach girdle on yet? Your stomach'll never go at this rate!" delivered by stridently troll-like older woman with limbs like secular oaks.
Here is Jacob on his last day in hospital, eager as I am for a change of scene

I finally got home at about 8 in the evening, in time for a perfectly judged gala supper cooked for us by my young brother William (chilled gazpacho, spaghetti alla carbonara, peaches and melon... splendid to see the last of that hospital food). Since then, the day and night hours have slipped by in a happy blur of feeding and sleeping sessions, punctuated by cuddles with my little boy.
Here is Jacob with his father, in a picture snapped yesterday, 12 June, his expected date of birth: