A Calf is Born or… Administering Subcutaneous Fluids in a Blizzard

This weekend I learned how to give a newborn calf subcutaneous IV fluids. Ruth (this is our calf’s name but you can call her Mountain Goat if you like) was born weak and there are many reasons for that which I might get into later. She did not stand up and she did not start to nurse after she was born which is rare for a newborn calf. When I walked down to the barn and saw Ruth lying on the floor, she looked like a sack of ambiguous parts — an elbow here, two protruding eyes and a neck that seemed to be twisted at a ninety degree angle. I reached down and ran my hands over her body, checking to see if the right parts were present: a spine, a tongue, a belly and hooves. She seemed to be intact but sopping wet. I imagine that I walked down to the barn only moments before she was born. The bag of waters had already broken and she was breathing on her own while her mother (Rose) vigorously licked her, trying to warm her up. Ruth looked like a puppet who had been haplessly dropped on the floor, her strings and levers all tangled up in a pile. Intuitively, I knew that something wasn’t quite right with Ruth. I knew she should have had more life in her body, more vigor in her lungs. But, never having seen a baby calf before, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

We were not expecting a baby calf. Our vet visited our property a couple of weeks ago and told us under no uncertain terms that he did not think Rose was pregnant. She did not look like an orange on toothpicks which is apparently how pregnant cows are supposed to look. We even gave Rose a blood test that also showed she was NOT pregnant. When we bought Rose, we bought her under the impression that she was pregnant but never received any official cow pregnancy documentation. After hearing that our cow was decidedly not pregnant, Heathar and I moved on with our lives, figuring out how to accumulate cow sperm so that we could get Rose pregnant. We had already started researching cow ovulation and what the vulva looks like as it approaches the fertile period (much like the human vulva actually.)

So when I went down to the barn and saw a newborn calf on the ground, it took my brain a few minutes to make sense of what was happening. Rose had given birth all without our worry, concern or help — even without our knowledge that she was pregnant. She had birthed her calf while I was painting our bedroom closet white. She had birthed her calf while Heathar was simmering bone broth on the stove. Rose did not call out for us, she did not moo. She just gave birth.

After I saw Ruth (Ruth is the calf) lying on the ground in a puddle of amniotic fluid, I called to Heathar and told her to bring down blankets and to call anyone who could help. Heathar called our neighbor (also named Jen) who rescues abandoned animals and cares for them on her property. We have often called her with animal emergencies. When we first moved onto our property, Jen and her husband helped us remove a nest of rattlesnakes that was living under our front porch. Jen is Animal Confident and if she doesn’t know the answer to something, she is certain she will be able to figure it out. Jen often says to us, “You guys, there is no right way. There is only the way that makes sense to you.” I imagine this is how you learn to be a parent as well. You adapt to your child. You get to know their specific needs and you figure out your own specific limitations. There is no recipe. There are no exact instructions to follow. Rearing a life becomes intuitive.

I used to be a midwife — a midwife for human babies. I used to attend births in the dark hours of the morning and stay up with new, terrified parents for days on end. Attending a birth was exhausting and also transcendent. I love the intensity of birth. I love that it requires all parts of your focus. I love that it requires community and strength and tears and moments where you think you cannot go on any longer. I love how it calls out a very real humanness in us, one where we are not pretending and are not preforming. There is no going back to who you were before a birth. There is only a threshold and one that you walk across whether you want to or not.You are forever changed. A cow birth, in my experience, is no different. Being with a small, very new life that is totally dependent on you, opens up something in the soul.

After we brought Ruth up to our house, we laid out blankets, heating pads and hot water bottles on the kitchen floor. We rubbed her fur dry and we gathered supplies: thermometers, IV bags, baby bottles and dog jackets. Our kitchen was instantly turned into an emergency vet clinic. Straw was scattered between the grout lines of our tile and our pants were stained with amniotic fluid, colostrum and cow urine. Eventually, we moved Ruth into the living room and made her a bed by the wood stove so she could continue to get warm and dry. As she started to get dry, we began to see what color she actually was— dark brown with black circles around her eyes. Her hooves began to change from a rubbery kind of plastic to a solid, wooden hoof. Her small, pink tongue felt like a thin rose petal as she attempted to lick us. She was starting to become more than a dismembered puppet.

The night Ruth was born there was also a snowstorm. (Nothing fun ever happens in nice weather.) When I tell Ruth her birth story, I will make sure to specifically emphasize the drama of the snowstorm. Our community, Ruth’s community, gathered around her with headlamps and flashlights and pulled at her skin until we found places where she was thick enough to withstand a needle. We watched the electrolytes soak into her skin and slowly, a haziness begin to disappear from her eyes.

I was talking with a friend recently about community. She said, “Jen, you know it’s lonely here in the city. No one watches out for one another. I just feel like I want something more.” I get what she’s saying. I also think there can be and is, thriving and real community in a city but what is unique about living in rural communities, is that when you need your community, it is not negotiable. When there is a snowstorm and the vet cannot make it to your house, you call your people in. There is no other option. In a city, you don’t need people in the same way because you can call an UBER, you can Instacart your groceries and you can stream all your favorite movies. You can become needless. You can have all your wants met without ever having to communicate them.

Communities are formed when you strip the protective layer of being human away — when you see what people need and respond to that. In these times, when people help us without an invoice, we feel like we should give them money. We feel indebted to them or like we owe them something for helping us. We forget that supporting each other when we need things is simply an exchange of humanness. It has become a currency that sits lifeless on our tongues. We profusely thank one another for being available and being willing to help us — as if we only expect absence and shadows in response. What if we don’t have to deserve it, we simply have to need it? I am not accustomed to this either okay— I feel guilty for asking my neighbors to give up their weekend to help our calf. I feel burdensome. I feel heavy, as though I must quickly recalibrate and find my balance again. But this weekend, I awkwardly tried to take it all in, to let the need flow out of me and feel the eagerness of our community weave around us by the fire while we all tried to figure out how to give a newborn calf subcutaneous fluids.