"Karate Kid(ding)"

Who would have ever thought that the two words; "Karate" & "Kidding" would go together?? No one! Because frankly, they don't!

Just a few days back I had to take the little one to his very first Karate tournament. He had been waiting all week long for that Saturday to come. It started out as a great day; getting ready, getting his uniform & belt on, and painting his toenails "black-belt black" (don't ask). At the same time, I was informed that one of our young boer doe's had lost her mucus plug. Great!! That means birthing is right around the corner- and we should have some new kids to boot! What a fabulous day this was going to be!!

Him and I got to the tournament at 9:30 in the morning. This was (what seemed to me like) a bigger tournament and it was held at a local high school. We hurried inside because we knew that the little kids (his forms class) were up immediately following the bigger kids. It ended up being quite a bit of "hurry up and wait"- but with this being both of our first times, I didn't quite know what to expect!

The huge gym was electric with excitement and activity! Parents flocked the stands on each side, youngsters practiced doing whatever it was they were there to do that day, and in the middle of it were all of the black-belt judges monitoring students in a multitude of rings around the floor. The entire gym hummed like a finely tuned machine.

As I sat in the bleachers amongst all of this organized chaos, watching the morning events unfold I realized exactly how completely out of sorts I was!

What the heck was I doing at a Karate tournament??? I know absolutely NOTHING about Karate- Except for of course, the time that I told my teenage daughter to go "Kung Fu Crazy" on Roy, my big 300lb sheep who was trying to bash her into the next century! But that ended with her shoe flying off, and me laughing so hard that I fell in the mud and the sheep I was holding fell on top of me! Funny Stuff!

Anyway, I am by no means a HICK. Sure, I raise livestock- But if you saw me out in the "real world" you would never ever know it unless I told you. But being at this tournament was a real jolter for me. I realized that just this Spring, my daughter and I went to a hog auction to buy a young pig for fair- and never once did I feel as "lost" as I did that morning at the high school. I worked that hog auction like I owned it!~ :)

I'm just starting to make a few friends at my boy's karate classes... "Just starting" to- that's actually a really sad statement given he has been going to Karate 2x's week for the past EIGHT months! Hey! I'm not unfriendly, I'm just SHY and pretty much keep to myself.

OK, I better get back on topic- His performance in the tournament went on without a hitch. He was fantastic (OK, maybe just in my eyes!) and he was super stoked to receive his first trophy!

After smiles and lots of congrats and photos, we went home...

Checked on the doe to see if she was in labor yet. She was doing quite a bit of straining without any real progress in delivery. I didn't want to interfere quite yet, and so I waited. After a short while she started to deliver "substance"- her bag of waters was starting to appear. This looks like a water balloon that protrudes further & further with each contraction and push. This is part of the natural delivery process. Because this water/bag was black in color, I used my gloved finger to gently touch it to see if it was a kid or just liquid. It was just liquid. Within moments her water broke.

Everything to this point was going as God had intended it to go, and I had decided to step aside and let nature do it's thing. She is a very young doe (just turning a year), and this is her first kidding. I decided to not get her more nervous than she already was with my presence.

After roughly 30 minutes, my daughter went out to see if her kid was born. By this time she should be licking it dry. She came back in to tell me she was straining (contractions/pushing) getting nowhere. Not great. Now I'm starting to have my "oh shit" moment. Waters are supposed to break, and feet / nose are to follow almost immediately.

Grabbed my gloves... Couldn't find my Obstetrical lube in a pinch- So I grabbed veg. oil. And off my daughter and I went. She held the doe while I went "fishing". There I was, hand buried past my wrist in the doe trying to figure out what is out of place that she isn't delivering. I felt a large mass. Now trying to figure out exactly what THAT mass is, is VERY tough! At first I thought butt, then I thought back, but then I realized it was a head. I had a head and it was facing up towards the spine- and I could not find the front feet. (Ideally, babies are to be born nose / front legs first (like diving) out of the mother looking toward the ground, not the sky.)

Now I had the baby, facing the wrong direction (sunny side up) a nose without feet. My thought process was to flip the baby over, find the front feet, bring them up by the nose and deliver. So after a contraction I pushed the baby back in further (to give me some room) and tried to carefully log roll it. I thought that went well, I now had the head facing the right direction (looking down not up). I searched frantically for the front feet. Another incident where time is not my friend. My mind is visualizing the baby looking like a seal sliding across the ice- nose forward, on it's belly, legs tucked back along its side. For the life of me I cannot find the front legs. And then I found one, it was above the head. Now my mental visual changed to a swimmers front crawl stroke. So I tried to lower the leg to where it needed to be.

All of this action feels like it is taking forever, when in reality only about 5 minutes have elapsed. Time, time, time... slipping, slipping, slipping... If I don't get this baby delivered it will die of asphyxiation. Got one leg, and one nose -need to quickly find the other leg. The doe gives one monster push and delivers the head.

Oh crap! Now I'm stuck, the head can't go back in, and without legs first the baby can't come out. I'm now worried too about the baby being choked to death with each contraction of the doe- but the more and more I look at the baby, and it's lack of movement, and the whiteness of it's tongue- I realize that it is non-viable.

So, I call the vet. He tells me that if I remove the head, I then should be able to push it back inside the doe and find the feet to deliver the body. I know that last sentence is tough to read, trust me- it was tough to hear! But again, the baby is dead- and there's no bringing it back. Time to save Momma... Because I was completely out of scalpels I asked my vet if he wouldn't mind stopping out. (Needless to say- I'm now fully stocked in scalpels again!)

With each contraction of the doe I hold my hand against the baby's protruding head. My gears shift from saving baby, to saving momma goat and I don't want her to push so hard something else bad happens, because contractions don't stop just because the head is out.

Vet arrives within a short time. I explain all the events leading up to that moment. He tells me that everything I had done was correct. Granted, he is a very nice vet- and who knows if that is truth, or if he was just trying to "poo-poo it" as to not make me feel any worse! I hold the doe while he gloves up, inserts up to his ARM (noticed I didn't say hand!) and goes for broke! He is fishing around inside of her like a mad man. Yanking and shoving....

The first thing he tells me is that she is carrying twins. FRICK!!!! For whatever reason I had it in my head that it was a single- small doe, first kidding = single in my mind. He said the leg I had belonged to the other kid. He told me the best way to tell that is to shake/tug the leg- if the head doesn't bob- that leg belongs to a different body. And yet another piece of common sense advise that comes from experience.

He struggled quite a bit trying to untangle the two to remove the first twin. The second twin also was non viable and super stuck- it took him quite a bit to remove it from the doe. After watching him reef and tug I knew that the manipulating I was doing earlier - was nowhere near as forceful as he had been doing. I wasn't being a total "girl" about my manipulating- I was just more cautious than he... And so I asked him about it.

When everything was said and done, on the ground were two nice size twin boer goat kids; one traditional (brown head / white body) doeling, and one black/white belly band buckling. Both perished.

Gave the doe some Oxytocin to increase contractions to help her expel the afterbirth, gave her Penicillin for infection, and Banamine for pain and inflammation.

What a day it had turned out to be. One minute I'm having an extreme high, watching my boy feel like he accomplished the world, only to have the next minute come on like a firestorm and challenge me in every sense of the word.

Even though I can remain collected and confident, yet honest in my abilities during a crisis (meaning YES, I *could* cut the head off- if I had the tool to do it)- I'm not completely heartless. I did have a good cry later that night while playing the "woulda, coulda, shoulda" game in my head. I know I'm my own worst critic. But I do feel that if I would have been faster, more aggressive all while knowing it was a multiple birth- I think things may have been different.

As for my doe? She looks like an absolute train wreck on the back end. She is completely softball sized swollen to the right of her vagina. She prefers to lay over walk right now. It took 2 days for her to clean out (that worried me too!). Her appetite has been increasing (good sign). She is still on pain meds and penicillin.

Another young doe is going to kid within the next week... I pray that I don't have to go "go for broke" on her.