Motherhood, Farm Style

You bring joy. Your existence in this world makes the whole place better. You are enough, just as you are. —Juliet, my first baby, always.

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Here’s What’s Happening At Good Spirits Farm

It turns out that motherhood is harder than it looks. Remember a few weeks ago when a guinea made a nest out in the grass and we dropped a rolling coop over her as protection so she could hatch her brood in peace? Well, she gave up about a week later, abandoning the eggs and leaving the coyotes a delicious egg snack.

Then, a week or two later, we found Mega Broody: A chicken trying to cover 20+ eggs in a hay bale nest. We didn’t know how long she’d been hidden away, and we couldn’t bring ourselves to kick her off the nest and take the potentially partially incubated eggs. We figured we could deal with the extra chicks when they eventually hatched. (Who doesn’t like having a few little peeps chirping about, anyway?)

Well, a week went by. Then two. And then…the barn started to smell like dead things. We couldn’t figure out where the smell was coming from until I finally decided to check under Mega Broody. She’d pecked at many of the eggs and broken them—so rotting eggs and maggots were everywhere. Truly putrid. We pulled her off the nest, gave her a bath, and told her, "maybe we’ll try again next year.”

Meanwhile, we’ve been in full “get the big chores knocked off the list” mode as our own little egg incubates. One task that had been weighing on me was vaccinations and hoof trims for the flerd. This is always a chore of a day, getting everyone into the working area takes patience (and time), and no one likes getting—or giving—shots. (Gimlet is particularly dramatic about the whole thing.)

With the help of a teenage gal I’ve hired to lend a hand, we got everyone up-to-date on their shots and all the sheep hooves trimmed.

(This was Peasblossom, who has gotten so chunky, she actually got STUCK in the pedicure chair.)

It’s a good thing we rushed through getting these last minute chores done, because on my due date, the obstetrician notified us that my amniotic fluid levels were too low and we needed to go straight to the hospital for induction. The next morning, our farm gained its newest (and cutest) critter.

Motherhood so far IS hard. The days are long, and the part where you have to heal from a major body trauma while also learning to care for a tiny, needy human, and going through a massive fluctuation of hormones is quite the practical joke from Mother Nature. But I intend to be a little better at it than the birds, and to tackle parenting the way I’ve managed this farm for the past 5 years: One day at a time, one task at a time, and one tiny miracle at a time.

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Here’s What I Loved This Week

I went back and forth on where to deliver when we found out we were expecting. Medicine likes to refer to pregnancies like mine as “geriatric,” so we were considered high-risk from the beginning. That made me think perhaps I’d be better off at a big city hospital, like Vanderbilt, in Nashville. But: driving 2 hours each way for every OB appointment (doctors generally only have admitting privileges at hospitals near them), seemed undoable.

After talking to a friend who works as an ER pharmacist at the nearest small city hospital, and enough visits to the OB where everything seemed to be on track for a healthy pregnancy, we decided to stay closer (haha, still an hour and 20 minutes) to home.

It was a great choice. We could not have gotten better care, and the labor and delivery nurses were outstanding. I’m so grateful for everything they did to make sure our bundle of joy arrived safely in this world.