Much to think about

By the end of August my thoughts were full of four pressing and painful issues:

1. What to do about the neighbor Nancy.
2. The meaning of my father's passing.
3. Whether to try for another baby and risk more sorrow.
4. Money.

Money was the constant theme. How to survive, really. The economy was a mess: inflation was upwards toward 20% a year, more in some spheres. Taxes were up and up, as were groceries and gas. Everything but our income, which was not tied into the cost of living. We were slowly slipping into financial doom.

As for Nancy, I held a lot of affection for her in my heart. I thought she could be a neat friend. The strange things she had said and done were mysteries to me, and didn't stick well to her in my mind. I thought maybe it was all due to her husband, who was a strange character we seldom saw. He had set up a leather-working shop in the old carriage house, but when the kids were over there playing, they never saw him do anything but lie on the couch he'd moved in there. So as thoughts of Nancy went round and round in my mind, I alternated between feeling mystifed and loving. Very confusing. As for what I might do to ensure the better outcome, I had no idea.

My father's death caused me primarily to think more of my mother's welfare. She seemed happy enough, and in one way we were all relieved: she had much more freedom to come and go and visited us much more frequently, sleeping in our family room off the kitchen, where the kids loved to visit her. Of course she was not confined there but she carved out a little niche in that spare room and often had her knitting out and a cookie for the kids. So his loss was not ours, not in any immediate way.

But then there was the loss of my little ones. The tiny body I had held after my body ejected it caused a constant underlying ripple in my awareness still, after nearly a year, and that was just the first. I had wanted a large family, and somehow I was failing to fulfill that dream. I had failed to provide 9 months of nurture for these two eagerly awaited new members of our family while they built their little earthly homes deep inside of me, and it all seemed so wrong. The emptiness was filled with the doctor's ringing voice: you will never bear another child.

But I didn't feel that way. I really felt I could bring a new baby into the world, as I had 3 times before.

I was still in the 6 months of rest that doctor's partner had recommended before I should try again, that tumultuous late August, so I didn't need to make any decisions. But it weighed on me like poverty and loneliness and death.

So my mind was filled with much to think about, and my heart stood on the precipice of deep pain. There was nothing to do but keep doing, and loving those whose care I had successfully found myself entrusted with. Time would do something with all this...

1977.

Out of the nursery...

Throughout April kids continued to be born, and each time we took them to the pen in the basement to join their older cousins, we were amazed at how fast the older ones were growing.

A brand-new kid is the size of a small cat, if you don't count the long legs. Or the size of a man's shoe, plus legs. They stand within an hour of birth, and start to bounce and kick an hour after that, if they're still awake.

But a week later, they are noticeably bigger, and their skills are equally more impressive.

The baby goats were all 'on the ground' and well. We moved them from the pen in the basement as soon as they were big enough to step over the fencing. We were amazed at how fast they'd grown. They went out to the 'kid yard', where they continued to 'popcorn', as we called it.

They still needed to be fed by a bottle, but that was no problem now that the weather was nice. We'd fill up the pop bottles to the top, cap them, and send them out two by two in the arms of the human kids. They'd prop the bottles under their elbows and the babies sucked them dry in about 2 minutes.

We let them have as much as they wanted. There was plenty.

But the milking routine now took longer: gather equipment, put the goats on the stand, milk out the half gallon or so they gave per milking, run it into the kitchen for filtering and pouring into bottles through a funnel, run back out with the bottles and feed the babies, who knew the routine and were crying lustily.

You could tell when a baby was full because his sides stood out and he'd begin to stagger. Soon he'd crawl into the pile of already sleeping babies and doze off.

By the end of April only the tiniest babies remained in the basement, but we decided not to keep them there. We moved them out with the other babies and they learned the routine quickly.

It remained only to dismantle the nursery and haul the used bedding to the garden. The plastic tarp that we had put down under the bedding, before the first baby was born, made the clean-up fairly easy. We dragged the sheet up the stairs and out the bulk head and around to the garden, where it helped nourish the roots of our future meals.

Our first kidding season was over. Our older bucklings were leaving for their new homes, mostly in suburbia. We were working from dawn till sunset and beyond. And we had a new habit called 'goat TV', which was the pastime of standing and watching the babies cavort to express their joy of being alive.

Our little surprise

We closed on the property at the end of August and went away for Labor Day weekend, our last holiday because the next day we started bringing home the goats.

We had a little surprise for the children, and decided to tell them when we were all together that weekend.

The surprise was that I was pregnant.

I was elated. The whole concept of self-sufficiency, a family effort, was built in my mind around family. And since the early days of thinking about getting a farm, or perhaps even earlier, I had had dreams of more children.

Way back in my girlhood, I had wanted a big family. As a teen, I cried myself to sleep thinking how long it would be till I had my babies. I decided I wanted 14.

The reality of motherhood set in with our first, VJ. I breastfed him with great joy, but he seemed to have an insatiable appetite and a desire not to sleep and within a few weeks, I was exhausted. (Something I didn't know for another 30 years is that he would always have a voracious appetite and an inability to sleep.)

When VJ was several months old, I had shrunk in size to several pounds below my normal weight, and was jittery. It turned out to be a hyperthyroid condition that over time went away, possibly with the help of the iodine the doctor had me consume in copious amounts.

Then we joyfully had child #2. By this time I was definitely questioning the big-family idea. Margo reacted to many of my favorite foods and was uncomfortable throughout her infancy. And the thyroid problem hit again.

And 4 years after the first, we had #3. The thyroid problem hit very hard and I was miserable. It was so severe that the specialist we found in Boston declared I would never have children. When I told him I had just had my third, he did not believe me until John showed him a photo from his wallet. He put me on strong meds and I had to quit breastfeeding to use them, which broke my heart.

One of the most tender moments of my life happened right after that. I had 2 days to quit breastfeeding, so I began to wean Fritz onto a bottle, all the while mourning the change. But I did it with complete dedication, even while still feeling very sick with the thyroid condition. At the end of second day, we were done. I nursed him in the evening, but gave him a bottle for his last feeding before I went to bed. Then I crawled under the covers and laid there crying to myself with the loss of it.

And in his crib Fritz lay awake, restless, not crying but not settling down. He was 2 months old.

The hours went by and we each lay there awake. I could hear him. He never fussed, he just made baby noises. My heart was fully turned toward him and I felt that his was turned toward me.

Finally the sky began to lighten. It was probably 4:30 in the morning. I got up and went in to him. He was awake. I picked him up and carried him to the living room, sat in my rocking chair, and nursed him one last time with the last bit of my milk. He looked at me and I looked at him and we said our goodbyes. We acknowledged it would be ok.

Then I was at peace and so was he. We went to bed and slept well. We adapted. Life went on.

So now I was pregnant. Fritz was 6. It had been a while, and I was ecstatic.

The children were excited beyond words. It was a big unknown to them, and a bit abstract when we told them the baby would not be born till April or May.

From that point I felt a lot of fatigue, and some queasiness. It was obviously a good solid pregnancy, for which I was grateful. But it interfered with my ability to do as much around the farm as I wanted and had expected to do, primarily because I was so tired.

But I knew that in three months I would be feeling myself again and would be in full bloom of a happy pregnancy, feeling robust and in excellent health.

And it was true. I began to feel myself again by the middle of November.

A few weeks later, at the end of my 4th month, I miscarried a beautiful, perfect, but much too tiny baby.

It made no sense.