What a day it has been!

Praise God, our days of waiting are over! Betty gave birth to beautiful, healthy triplets today!  Here's how it all went down:

It just so happened that both Mom and Dad left early this morning to go visit my Grandma who lives two hours away.  Isaac and I stayed at home just in case Betty delivered.  About 8:00 am Betty started showing some serious signs of impending labor.  Isaac and I gathered all we needed, went out to be with her, and called Mom and Dad to let them know that Betty was going into labor.  We thought we were going to go through the delivery by ourselves, but Mom and Dad surprised us about an hour later by showing up.  They had decided to turn around and come home.  That turned out to be a major blessing, as it would have been much more difficult had we been by ourselves.

Isaac did a terrific job through the whole labor.  You would have thought he had done this hundreds of times!  Betty too, was a trooper!  This was her 4th freshening, and she did a great job through the whole thing.

By about 10:00 we knew for sure those babies were coming soon.  Betty was losing a lot of fluids, pawing the ground, and lying down then standing up repeatedly.  We didn't have to wait very long.  At 11:00 there were two little hooves and one little black nose sticking out.  At 11:05 the whole body followed and we found that Betty's first kid was a little girl!  She was in perfect position, and Isaac just helped out a little by pulling on the feet as Betty pushed.  Isaac named her Adah.  I want to pause here for just a moment to say what a miracle this was to watch!  It is such a wondrous thing to watch a life that God has created come into the world, even when it is just a little goat.  I couldn't stop smiling through the whole delivery.  It was just so amazing to see!

We were still cleaning up the first kid when Betty began having more contractions.  This next one came out very quickly, so quickly in fact that Mom and Dad didn't even know she was having another one until it was delivered.  This second kid, born at 11:22 was a buck, which Isaac named Apollos.

Now we were busy cleaning and drying the babies.  We were all in awe at everything we had just seen.  There is a technique called "bouncing" in which you can sort of feel if there are any more babies inside the doe.  Isaac tried this on Betty and initially said that he thought he felt something in there and thought she might have another one.  Time passed, however, and when Betty showed no signs of another kid coming, we decided that she was only having twins, which we were all completely fine with!

We had called some friends when Betty had first gone into labor and they decided to come over (and that's saying something since they live an hour and a half away!).  They arrived about 20 minutes after the second kid was born.  About this time, Isaac milked Betty out and then we bottle-fed the babies. 

 

 

    

After at least an hour of being out there with the kids and Betty, we decided to head inside to get some food.  Before the food was ready to eat, Isaac and Rylee and Trent (our friends) went out to check on the kids.  When they got to the goat pen they received a surprise!  There was a little hoof sticking out of Betty!  Isaac realized that it was a back hoof and there was only one.  This means that the baby was coming out backwards and had one leg bent back.  He thought that he was going to have to reach inside Betty to help her, and he was concerned that the baby might be dead, because the hoof was cold and he didn't know how long it had been there.  It only took a few pulls on that little hoof, however, and Betty's third kid came into this world, alive and well!  This was at 1:35, about 2 hours after the second kid was born.  I'm sure you can imagine how shocked and delighted we all were at the arrival of this third little kid!  I still can't believe it.

When we began thinking of names several days ago, we had found several names that we liked.  One of these, Tertius, meant "third" and so we decided that if we had a buck that was the third kid, we would name him that.  Agrippa means "feet first" so we determined to name a buck that came out with his back feet first Agrippa.  Betty's third kid qualified for both!  Therefore, his name is Tertius Agrippa.  :)

 Adah

Apollos

 

 Tertius Agrippa

Yes, our days of waiting are over (at least until Bess is due!), but our days of waking up in the middle of the night to bottle feed kids have just begun!  Fun, fun... :)

~Kiah