AN: Here we are, another chapter.

I hope you enjoy visiting with our new parents as they're getting accustomed to their new little girl. Don't forget to let me know what you think!

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"Boy—she's tearin' that shit up," Daryl commented with a laugh.

The baby in question opened her eyes and, if she didn't look right at him, she looked mostly in his direction before she rolled her eyes back and closed them again. She didn't pause in her enthusiastic sucking. Daryl laughed to himself.

"You see that? I think she just told me to go to hell," Daryl said.

Carol laughed quietly and smoothed her fingers across the baby's forehead. Daryl was feeling more relaxed now that he felt like Carol looked, in general, better than she had. She had allowed him to help her bathe after he'd brought the baby's bassinet into the bathroom and assured her that it was safe and secure, and that the baby, who had been sleeping at the time, wouldn't have time to realize that she was left in the bassinet instead of being held.

His daughter had failed him, and she'd cried about her situation and made Carol coo and fuss over her, but at least she'd waited to begin her protests until Daryl was already helping Carol out of the bath.

Carol had eaten dinner, too, when it had been delivered to them by one of the enthusiastic teenaged girls that tried to peek around Daryl on all sides to see if she might catch a glimpse of the baby.

And, in addition to a bath, clean clothes, and good meal, Carol had taken one other nap, while Rose slept in Daryl's arms. Now, as night closed around them, Carol looked vaguely like she could do with another nap, but she looked a great deal more rejuvenated than she had when the baby had first made her debut into the world.

Despite the fatigue around her eyes, she looked, honestly, radiant at the moment. And the lamplight, since it was getting dark and they didn't want anything that was too bright for the baby's eyes, did a great deal to hide even the fatigue. Daryl might never have guessed that, only that morning, Carol had brought a whole new life into the world.

"She did not tell her Daddy to go to hell," Carol cooed, her voice overly soft for the words she spoke. "She loves you."

"She don't like me commentin' on her eatin'," Daryl said.

"No woman likes that, Daryl," Carol said. "Not unless—you're saying something like…you haven't eaten enough, are you sure you don't want some more of this delicious whatever-it-is."

"I ain't got to ask if she wants more," Daryl said. "She's just goin' to town."

"Shhhh," Carol said. "Don't disturb her meal. She's hungry and it's good for her to eat until her tummy's full. That's what the doctor wants her to do."

"I'm just teasin'," Daryl said, settling down a little closer to Carol and resting against the same pillows as her so that he could be as close to her as any planetary laws allowed and could have a better view of their nursing baby. "I like that she's eatin' good."

"I don't know how much she's getting," Carol said, her expression suddenly changing, after she contemplated the baby for a few mintues.

"What'cha mean?"

"I don't know—about my milk," Carol said. "It might not be in yet. Not like she's wanting. I don't know when it comes in. She might be hungrier than I can really take care of. I'm a little bit worried that's why she's nursing so often. Do you think it's been too often? I can't remember how it was with Sophia. Not—that much. I got through her earliest days—months, even—in a blur of just trying desperately to keep her from crying and making Ed mad."

"She ain't gonna make me mad if she cries," Daryl said. "So don't'cha worry about that. But—what do I do to make you make her more milk? Can I—get you somethin'?"

"It just comes in when it's ready," Carol said. "It's supposed to adjust to be enough for her, but…what if it's not?"

Daryl's stomach tightened at the possibility that the baby might be hungry. Maybe she was even starving to death or something like that. Daryl didn't know how long it could take something that small and new to succumb to starvation. Suddenly, Carol looked a little panicked and that didn't make Daryl feel any better about the whole situation.

He scrambled out of bed.

"What do I do?" He asked, pulling his pants on so that he wasn't just running around in his underwear in case he needed to go and do something in a hurry. "Like—if I go get one of them cows or somethin'? Milk it. Will that—hold her 'til you make more or something?"

"Formula," Carol said.

"Formula," Daryl said. "Shit—why the fuck didn't I think about formula?"

Carol smiled to herself, and Daryl was honestly pleased to see any expression on her face besides the little lines of panic.

"It's OK, Daryl," Carol assured him. "You don't have to think of everything."

"Do we got formula?" Daryl asked.

"I got some from storage," Carol said. "Just in case. Just to supplement if I didn't make enough. Look in the nursery. Against the far wall there's that little white cabinet. I put a couple of cans in there."

Daryl darted down the hall in the darkness. He cursed when he slammed his toe too hard on the threshold of the nursery—a wooden piece that stuck up far too far, at that moment, to be reasonable. He turned on the light and found the formula. Immediately, his heart leapt with an excitement he never expected to feel over a can with a cartoon bunny printed on it.

He took the can to Carol, who was still doing her best to nurse a baby that was desperately trying to suck her mother dry, if she hadn't already done so.

"I can't do anything with that," Carol said.

"It's the formula, right?"

"You have to mix it up," Carol said.

"I don't know how to do that, if we're bein' honest."

"You need a bottle. I cleaned them when I was in labor, remember?"

"Lined up on the counter."

Carol nodded.

"Warm water up, Daryl. On the stove. If you look—there are instructions. You just—mix it up. It's not hard."

Daryl took the can back to the kitchen. He poured clean water into a pot and put it on the stove. He turned the heat on low. If the baby was going to drink it, he figured it didn't need to be too much warmer than room temperature. He didn't realize how tired he was until he tried to read the tiny words printed on the side of the can and wondered why they would print the damned things so small when it was probably new parents with tired eyes that were trying to read them.

Still, he finally got the words to come into focus and he measured out the powder. He wasn't sure how much to make, and he didn't want to bother Carol with an idiotic question. There were different possible measurements, and the baby was hungry, so he decided to go with the largest possible one that was detailed out—probably a full serving for a hungry baby with an empty tummy.

Daryl kept sticking his finger into the pot of water as it heated on the stove. He reasoned that if he could put his hand in there, the water wouldn't be too scalding, but it would also allow him to make sure that it was warm enough for her to enjoy it. After all, she was drinking something that was the temperature of Carol's body currently.

Fairly satisfied with the temperature of the water, Daryl filled the bottle to the line—nearly at the top—and screwed the lid on. He shook it up, as the can instructed that he should do, and he tasted it to see if it was warm enough.

It tasted like shit, and he really couldn't imagine that the baby would like it, but he wasn't a connoisseur of human milk, either, so he couldn't really comment on its verisimilitude.

"Daddy to the rescue!" Carol announced when he rushed back into the bedroom with the bottle stretched out in her direction. He sat next to her and watched as she slipped her finger down and pressed against her skin, essentially making the baby lose her grip on the nipple.

The baby's first expression was one of shock. Someone—or something—had the audacity to interrupt her sucking. As Carol moved her away from the nipple that she immediately began to search out again, her expression changed to one of possibly justified outrage. Daryl's stomach twisted at her angry little expression that froze on her features for a long second before she let out a banshee like scream of discontent.

Carol shushed her and introduced the nipple into her mouth, but she made it perfectly clear that she had no interest in what she'd been given. She just cried around it.

"She don't like that," Daryl offered.

"I can see she doesn't like it, Daryl," Carol said. "But—maybe she's too hungry to know what she wants."

"I can tell you that she don't want that," Daryl said.

"She's got to eat," Carol said.

"She was eatin' before, weren't she?"

"I don't know if she was really getting anything," Carol said.

They had to raise their voices to talk to one another because, as they discussed the situation and Carol rubbed the nipple around the inside of Rose's mouth as some kind of invitation to partake of the freshly prepared formula, the baby just raised her voice in protest and went rigid and red in the face.

"Whatever she was gettin' or not gettin' made her happier'n she is now, Carol," Daryl pointed out.

"Maybe it's just the nipple's different," Carol said.

"Of course it's different. That one's made of rubber. Yours is made of—nipple. Skin. Whatever. It ain't that."

"Maybe if we—had a dropper," Carol said.

"A dropper?" Daryl asked.

"Like a medicine dropper," Carol said. "I could just—drop some of it in her mouth. A few drops at a time. Maybe I could even—figure out how to do it while she was latched to me."

"We gotta do something!" Daryl said. "She's all red. Should she be all red like that? What if she ain't OK?"

Daryl immediately wished he hadn't said that. He wished he'd kept his concerns to himself. Carol's worry kicked up a notch and she suddenly hugged the baby to her almost desperately, as though holding her tightly could somehow keep anything bad from happening.

She'd lost one child before. She'd had it snatched away from her. It was clear, from the way she held the baby, that she was reliving some kind of trauma. She was determined not to let this little one be taken from her.

"Daryl!" She said desperately.

Immediately, Daryl recognized her desperate plea as a completely irrational one. She wanted him to make it all OK. She wanted him to fix everything. She wanted him to assure her that the baby was fine. And he was ill-equipped, honestly, to do anything.

But she was not calm, and she needed him to be calm. Their baby girl, who was absolutely not the pinnacle of calm at the moment, needed him to be calm.

Daryl stilled himself.

"Take that outta her mouth," he said, being as authoritative as he could. "Put her back on your tit. Back—where the hell she was happy. I mean it—put her back there."

Carol nodded, clearly needing him to take some control of the situation. The baby didn't fight her over losing the bottle, and she didn't fight too much to be reintroduced to Carol's breast once she realized she was getting what she wanted. She whined, a slightly pathetic sound, once she'd begun sucking again, but she stopped crying.

"Don't move her," Daryl said. "Keep her right there. I'ma be back."

He slipped back down the hallway, this time avoided the threshold, and burrowed through a basket of odds and ends that had been moved around at least six times while Carol had been labor. He found what he'd known would be there—a glass dropper. He washed it in the kitchen sink and brought it to Carol. He unscrewed the bottle, filled it with formula, and offered it to her.

The baby protested her mother's finger slipping in beside the nipple she was so attached to already, but after a second, she adjusted to suck at Carol's fingertip and the nipple simultaneously. Carol reintroduced her finger after moving it a second, this time with the dropper hidden there as well

"I need help," Carol said. "I can hold it like this but…can you squeeze it? Slow, Daryl. Just a drop or two."

When her eyes were open, the baby looked back and forth between the two of them like she wasn't sure what to do with either of them, or if she should trust them at all. She didn't protest the drop or two of milk that Daryl squeezed into her mouth—not for the long time that it took him to empty the dropper one drop at a time. She didn't protest, either, the second or third dropper full of milk that he dripped into her mouth, one drop at a time, with the dropper resting, hidden from detection, against Carol's finger.

They were on the fourth dropper before she began to try to force Carol's finger away and, being offered her preferred nipple again, alone, she angrily turned her face away from it no matter how Carol tried to convince her to latch.

And then, promptly, she spit up at least a dropper full of milk when Carol burped her.

But she was satisfied. And she didn't scream about any of her ordeal. Instead, she stared at them with eyes as wide as they'd been all day.

"I don't honestly know if she was hungry or not," Daryl confessed.

"She ate it," Carol said. "Daryl—what if I can't make milk for her?"

"Then we'll feed her formula," Daryl said.

"What if we run out?" Carol asked.

"Won't run out," Daryl said. "We'll get more."

"What if we can't find more?" Carol asked.

Daryl swallowed down some amusement that bubbled up inside his chest.

"We'll find more," he assured her. "But—maybe we ought not to even worry about it until we talk to the doctor. She ain't eat but a couple droppers of milk, Carol. And she threw up a whole one of them, anyway. I ain't sure she wouldn't have gotten by without it. You said yourself, milk might not even be in."

He watched as Carol relaxed, absorbing his reassurance like a sponge. The panic subsided and the fatigue began to show on her features again. She looked back at the baby who was content to simply watch them.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Carol asked, whispering the words.

"Always," Daryl assured her.

"I'm scared," Carol breathed out.

Daryl's chest tightened.

"It's OK. I know you are," he said. I am too. But—you're doin' fine."

"I don't want to lose her," Carol said.

"Me either," Daryl said. "But—I don't think you got to worry. I'ma help you take care of her. All the time—much as she needs. And tomorrow? We're gonna introduce her to the rest of…her family. Merle and Andrea. T. This whole damn place is chompin' at the bit just to see her. Carol—there ain't a damn thing that she's gonna need. And if you and me ain't even enough to get it for her? She's got a whole damn army of people lookin' out for her now."

Carol smiled to herself.

"She does, doesn't she?"

Daryl leaned his head and requested a kiss. Carol gave it to him, kissing him like she was as starved for his affection as the baby had seemed for milk when she'd been allowed to simply contentedly suck at her mother's breast.

Daryl let Carol have her fill of the kiss.

"Let me have her for a little bit," Daryl said when the kiss broke. "You get some sleep."

"What about you?" Carol asked.

"I'll get plenty of sleep," Daryl assured her. "Don't you worry about me. I ain't the ones with the boobs she likes so damn much—so you better sleep while you can."

"Daryl?" Carol said as she handed over the baby. He hummed at her. "You're—already the best Daddy in the world. I need you to know that, OK?"

Daryl didn't try to hide his smile at the approval.

"And you're already the best Mama she could ask for," Daryl assured her. "Now—get some sleep. I'm bringin' her back the minute she starts those hungry puppy noises again, so you better get a jump on things."

Carol laughed to herself.

"I love you," she said.

"I love you, too, woman," he assured her. "More'n you could ever imagine."