Maybe I'll Finally Get Some Sleep Tonight

Genevieve says no.

Genevieve, one of our high-maintenance Nubian does (I say that with love and eye bags), has been very pregnant for what feels like the last twelve years. According to the calendar, she was due any day. According to her behavior—dramatic sighing, shifting around like she couldn't get comfortable in her own skin, and throwing side-eye at anyone who asked how she was feeling—she was due yesterday, last week, and also somehow last month.

So I started the drill. For the last two days and nights, I’ve been checking on her every two hours. Yes, even at night. Yes, even when it was 10 degrees and the wind was coming in sideways. I have personally gone out to the barn in a bathrobe, parka, snow boots, and a headlamp, looking like a cross between a prospector and a half-deflated lawn Santa.

By last night, I looked at Genevieve and said, “Look, girl, either have these babies or tell me if I need to cancel my plans for the rest of the decade.” She gave me a blank stare and shifted her weight like she was rearranging furniture in there.

Well, turns out she heard me—because after being in labor all night (and I do mean all night, with the kind of groaning that had me wondering if she was birthing twins or trying to pass a philosophy degree), she finally delivered: twin boys. One came in at a solid 8 lbs., the other just a hair under 7, both healthy, hollering, and already bouncing off the walls.

Genevieve is fine. Smug, even. She’s standing there like, “That wasn’t so bad,” while I look like I just came out the wrong end of a goat tornado. I think she was holding out just to see how long I could function on no sleep and cold showers.

The babies are adorable, of course. Wobbly legs, floppy ears, that wide-eyed, slightly confused look like they’re still deciding if gravity was a good idea. They’re nursing well and making the kind of tiny sneezes that instantly lower your blood pressure—until they poop on your foot, and then we’re back to reality.

Now, since Genevieve is a dairy goat, we had to decide: milk her and bottle-feed the babies ourselves? Or let her raise them, and just take a little of the milk for us?

Let me tell you something—I’ve raised kids. Human ones. I’ve done my time in the baby foxhole. I’ve earned the right to say, with great confidence and very little patience: I am not bottle-feeding anyone else’s offspring. That’s not goat farming. That’s babysitting with extra laundry.

So Genevieve gets to do the mom thing, and I get to sneak a bit of milk here and there. Fair trade. She raises her own twins, I don’t lose my last functioning brain cell, and we're all happy in the end.

Here’s hoping tonight I finally get more than 90 consecutive minutes of sleep. But who am I kidding? I’ll probably be out there in my pajamas again by 2 a.m., checking on the babies, because once you've lost sleep to goats, you never really get it back.

Welcome to the farm, boys. Try not to start a mutiny with the chickens. Or the sheep. Or me.