Well, that was terrifying

But the upshot is we have BABIES

I promised I would send out an update as soon as I had one. I'll start with the upshot first; we have our first babies, they are healthy, and mama is good! But MAN the process was a scary and new experience for me.

So, first and foremost, don't let this scare you off of getting goats and having babies if you want them. It is estimated that only 2 - 5% of goat births require intervention. The vast majority of goat births only require you to stand there and say, "Good girl, you're doing SO WELL!" and take pictures.

But, if you do it enough times, the 2 - 5% will happen, and although I wasn't experienced, I tried to be as prepared as possible to intervene if necessary. Eventually, if you have enough kids, someone is going to need help.

So, this is my fourth year of having kids. Before tonight, there was only one other time that I had a goat who required intervention, and I called the vet. Tonight, it was a Friday night, snowing, and the roads were getting bad - so I had to do it myself.

Bella, (my favorite goat) went into obvious labor this morning. At about 11 am, her water broke. She spent the day working through the labor, breathing, stretching, walking it off; she would go down and get back up and paw and get up and go down again, but she just never seemed to get any further.

Mostly, I just let her go. This was her fourth kidding, she knew what she was doing, and there was no reason for me to mess with her - also, like I said earlier, the vast majority of kiddings require no intervention at all.

My husband, Mark, went on a last-minute extra goose hunt at my urging. Because I have only experienced girls kidding, I thought I was fine alone. Maybe I jinxed it.

The snow started to fall, I checked on Bella every few minutes, and nothing was happening. Finally, around two, I decided to go pick up the human children - I was worried that if I didn't pick them up from school, I would get caught helping Bella birth and miss the pick-up cutoff for the school.

Once I grabbed the boys, brought them back, baked up some chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs, and handled them while running in and out of the barn, I realized we were in trouble. I was out of my depth.

It should have only taken a few hours at most for her to go from the initial labor to kids on the ground, and she wasn't progressing. So around 5 pm, I called Mark and asked him to come home to take the boys. I was starting to get scared. Bella is my non-human best friend, I love her, and I was didn’t want to lose her.

Before Mark could even get home, I watched Bella pant and I realized it was time - I had to do something. So I pulled a glove and the lube out of my emergency goat kit (yep, you read that right), and I went in. It was terrifying. All I could think of, though, was that if we didn't get those babies out of her, she would die, and I couldn't lose my bestie.

A few notes on "going in:"

• There is certainly a moment where you ask yourself, "What am I doing here?" "No. Really. What am I doing here?"

• Until you actually have your hand in a birth canal, you have no idea how LONG it is. It's like a crazy carnival sideshow haunted house hallway. I just like stuck a finger in praying to feel a head or something. NOPE. You gotta get IN THERE.

• No. Seriously. What life choices have brought me to this moment?

• Everything seems fraught with peril when you're elbow-deep in one of your best friends. You know that her life and that of her babies RELY ON YOU. That's a lot of pressure. Also, I know there has to be a first time for everything, but still. Woof.

• I've read a lot, researched thoroughly, and watched my vet go in that one time. So, I finally just looked at Bella and said, "Ok, girl, it's just you and me, and we are going to be ok."

I felt in and felt what was like a little dingle. I freaked out, and called one of my goat friends, Tiffany.

"Was it a tail?" she asked. Holy moley, it was a tail. OH NO, IT WAS A TAIL. The baby was breech.

Tiffany started a chat with another expert who was sending rapid-fire instructions. I went in again. I closed my eyes and let my hands try to translate what I was feeling into a picture. It was a tail, and right below it, a little hoof. I grabbed the slippery hoof and pulled. I was worried I would rip him apart. I fumbled around and felt another. I grabbed them both and pulled them together.

If I hadn't seen my vet pull a kid once last year, there is no way I would have been able to do it. It takes so much more pressure and strength than I would have been comfortable using if I hadn't seen him brace himself and pull full force.

Also, I would have thought that a slippery and slimy little thing would just slide right out - wrong. It took a lot of pulling as hard as I could. It’s so scary to use your whole body and brace to yank on a tiny baby, knowing that if you tear something with him or her they both could die. I was afraid I would break him.

BUUUUUUT - I didn't kill anyone. He came out and was somehow in good enough shape to take a breath and cough and get right up - even after six hours of labor.

I called some of my girlfriends on chat and cried. It was so scary. I thought I was going to kill Bella, but I also knew if I did nothing, she would die. As I was on video chat with them, Bella went down again and started to push, my friends watched with me as Bella gave birth unassisted to a second little boy.

So, that's what happened tonight. Tomorrow we have a few more to worry about. Hopefully, they're less eventful. But now, I have another "first time" under my belt. I saved my friend, Bella, and we got some cute little boys out of it too.