We have goat babies, ya’ll! Yesterday around 3pm Kissy went into labor. I brought her inside the birthing shed and got her all set up. Christine was on work calls and couldn’t get off the phone so she hoped Kissy would wait an hour and a half. She ended up taking 6 whole hours to birth, which sounds like a lot to me since my own labors were 3.5 and 3 hours each. I am just lucky, maybe, but I also thought goats were faster. I was freaking out the whole time because that is what I’m really good at.
At one point I was so stressed out worrying she wasn’t progressing and that something was wrong that I ended up going inside the house and just holding my daughter’s dog. I did not expect so much of this to bring me back to my own trauma with birthing and yet there it all was, all the fears and the helplessness back after almost ten years. Finally Christine got off her work call and took over sitting with Kissy, who seemed a bit fearful herself and wanted a lot of reassurance.
At one point Christine came out of the shed to tell me that Kissy was pushing. So I raaaaaaan over to find that it was just very sporadic pushing and she still really had a ways to go. There was so much waiting and patience involved! I learned a good lesson too…people on Facebook really freak out about things. A lot. And make me a nervous wreck. So I’m staying off of there with my questions next time.
The actual birthing is kind of a blur. That part happened rather fast. Kissy kept laying down with her bottom to the wall and we kept pulling her away from it so she would not smoosh a baby coming out. She finally turned, laid down, and then a bubble came out. I was yelling out to Christine to grab me gloves, grab me Betadine, grab me lube (in our case olive oil with lavender in it). I could see her vagina stretching open and I felt like I needed to help her so that she did not tear (this comes from the days when I wanted to be a midwife…that only lasted until I had a baby and the career lost it’s appeal, LOL). I helped her and the baby came out after several pushes in caul! That is, in the enclosed sack. I left it that way; with humans it is supposed to be good luck and we certainly need all the luck we can get. As soon as he was born (and this is interesting too, I could feel energetically that it was a boy) I peeled off the sack and helped him to breathe by suctioning out his mouth and nose. Kissy, excellent mama that she is, came right over and licked him and cleaned him off. Suddenly, and we were not prepared for this, she plopped down and started birthing the next one. Back to me yelling for various things…chux pad, towel, nose sucker, etc. This one had already popped out of it’s bag and I only saw one hoof along with the head so I started to go in to find the other hoof but Kissy gave a big push and this one slid out. With her I also knew immediately she was a girl. She is also quite small compared to her brother. She needed a lot more help with breathing but nothing scary, just a lot of goop in her mouth. Now unfortunately this actually DID scare the crumbs out of me because it just totally brought me back to my last birth when my daughter stopped breathing and turned blue before my very eyes. It brought me back to the helplessness and the pure terror I felt. I remember last night begging for Christine to take over, almost crying myself because I couldn’t get her suctioned out enough. Honestly if I never have to go through the birthing experience again with any human or animal it will be too soon. I can’t believe we have to go through this again in just a few days.
Christine did not take over with the suctioning much to my upset. She was less good about the birthing and suctioning but then she did help a lot with the drying off of the babies because it was a bit cool and we didn’t want them to catch a chill. She also helped them to nurse; the boy is so tall he has a hard time bending down to the teat. I put my foot down about cutting the boy’s umbilical cord. It was very long and nearly dragging the ground and so cutting it had to be done. But the inside of it was so thick with veins. I wanted to vomit at the thought of cutting it so instead I started hyperventilating. In the end I got to hold him while Christine tied and snipped. He fell asleep while it happened. Luckily the girl had a short cord so nothing was needed.
There are a few neat things about the babies. They both have more Nigerian Dwarf-like ears rather than their mama’s Mini La Mancha elf ears. (Bummer, I had hoped for elf ears but was guessing it wouldn’t happen because her other four babies have all had these long ears.) The boy (buckling) has Mama’s markings on the face and her head shape. The girl (doeling) does not and she has Daddy Burrito’s head shape. Both have white hearts on their sides! The buckling is almost twice the weight of the doeling and he is not very nice to his sister. He likes to paw at her and hump her (seriously, he humps already and he’s not even been here 24 hours!). They both came out SO strong and without any leg issues that seem common according to what I’ve read. They walked around almost immediately and in the night when I checked the camera I found him hopping all over the place and then trying to climb over his mama. The girl is a little less wiggly. Both are curious about humans and will come up to us when we sit down but they also startle easily. They are incredibly soft, too!
