Some days are "turn the camera off during zoom calls" days. No one needs to see this situation when I'm makeup-less, dirty, exhausted, and have been doing manual labor. Although I hadn't planned it that way, today was an "off camera" day.
At almost five days overdue, I fully expected Bella to give birth yesterday. I thought this round of kidding would be done by now. I planned this week for meetings where I showered, found my mascara at the bottom of my purse, and maybe even used a ring light.
But goats don't get calendar invites.
As I waited for babies yesterday, I even tested out what it would look like to outsource the writing part of my job to a robot. Someday, artificially intelligent robots might feed the goats, water the plants, and collect eggs from the chicken coop. However, it seems as if blogging is a lighter lift for a computer than doing the farm chores for now.
After I posted the AI blog, you came back with comments calling the post "creepy," "Hallmarky," and reminiscent of a "Stepford vibe." I agree.
It was strange - like looking at something I would write through a funhouse mirror. It was oddly anodyne, so saccharine sweet that the aftertaste overpowered the words. So, I'm back, fully me, not to be replaced by our robot overlords just yet. Welcome to my weird world of rabbit holes; glad you're here.
By the time we put the boys to bed last night, we still had no additional goat kids, and I was on high alert with Bella. My husband, a keen observer of animal behavior, was sure she was in labor and just didn't seem to progress.
Bella was in good spirits, though, and I went out at regular intervals to keep her energy up by doling out animal crackers. She endorsed that approach. As very food-motivated beings, we get each other.
Last night, I set my alarm every hour and checked the camera to see if she was in distress. She was up and down a lot but never seemed to get to the pushing stage.
By 5 am, I finally decided it was time to do something. I pulled out the vial of Oxytocin I have for such situations (don't we all?) and administered it to keep her progressing. I sat with my cup of hot coffee, watching her labor until my human tornado children awoke.
In a move that will feel familiar to all moms, I then made an oatmeal and sausage breakfast, packed lunches, and wrestled a three-year-old doing his best impression of an octopus into corduroys, all while watching Bella on the monitor.
Luckily my husband could do the dropoffs this morning as I headed back out to the pens. With one push, a cute little black boy appeared. I really wanted a girl from this pairing and was hoping for a little splash of color, but I'll take any healthy baby.
I felt Bella's abdomen and could tell there was another in there. Besides the Oxytocin, she had her first kid unassisted, so I assumed the next would be out in just a few minutes. Great. I could still get back inside for a shower pre-Zoom on that timeline.
Sipping coffee and softly cooing, "Good job, Mama, keep going," I figured this would all be over in short order. Then I sat. And sat. And sat some more.
I knew she still had one in there but nothing was happening. Finally, an hour after her first kid, I called the vet.
After Lucia's death last year, I have felt more intervention-shy than in the past. Even though the vet said there was nothing I could have done differently to save Lucia, I'd lost my confidence.
"At an hour in between, it's time for you to go in and see what's going on," she told me. Crap.
One of the things about urban farming is that when you’re alone and something needs to be done, there’s no other choice, so you just do it. I do things all the time I am not qualified for, but in the doing, I become so. After Lucia, I was scared. I did it anyway.
So, I took another gulp of coffee, scrubbed up, gloved up, and in I went. Since Bella already had one baby out, it was fairly easy to feel two little feet through a sac. What I didn't feel was a face - which should have been there - but the baby was breech.
Luckily the first boy's birth paved a figurative highway out of the exit ramp, so I got my grip around both legs and pulled. She slipped out even though she was positioned backward. It was fine and as easy as an “I’m elbow-deep in one of my best friends pulling a slippery baby out of her” situation can be.
For a second, I was sure that extra hour had killed the second baby. I pulled all the gross baby goo off and squeezed as much out of her nose as possible. I felt such relief when she sputtered out a breath and started to move.
It took a second for me to inspect her (a HER!) to see that she would likely be just fine. When she finally trained her fresh steely gray-brown eyes on me, I was a goner. She's a keeper.
This new girl has a beautiful reddish fawn coat that changes color when you pet her. She looks like a goat version of those color-changing sequined pillows that were popular about ten years ago.
Ultimately, I barely got my hands scrubbed in time for the zoom call. I didn't even get another coffee before the meeting called to order, and I left the camera off. Nobody needed to see that situation.
Worth it.
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