Baby Faith is nearly two months old already - and I have so many other things to write about, too! But I'm not going to beat myself up over it. One of my most important goals for 2022 is to be less bogged down in the "things of this world" that don't particularly matter and that nonetheless manage to bring me a crippling amount of stress. I almost decided to give up blogging once and for all, after nearly 10 years, but I won't. I love the blog and I enjoy looking back on journals of the horses and my walk with Christ. I'm not a consistent blogger and it falls by the wayside when other, more important things get in the way, and that's OK with me. It won't create a vast readership, but I don't need one. I'm flattered by those of you who take the time to read and say hello, and the blogosphere is one of the few truly pleasant pockets of Internet where one can really just enjoy time with likeminded people and not have random fights all the time, and I love reading and lurking on everyone's blogs even if I don't always comment. Nonetheless, this overachiever has decided that blogging is something I'll allow myself to do imperfectly.
Without further ado, may the imperfection continue.
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Faith was giving me the run-around for some time after the birth of little Rose on the night of Sunday the 14th of November. She had been enormous for weeks, with a gigantic edema, and often looked very uncomfortable - even mildly colicky - in the afternoons. Still, there was just no milk at all. Her udder was slowly filling but I couldn't express a thing.
On Monday the 15th, she really started getting upset during the late afternoon. She paced up and down, kicked at her belly, and generally looked miserable. Her lovely gut sounds and great vital signs pointed not to colic but to early labour, so of course the SO and K and I sat up with her until well past midnight. By then she was just eating hay, as she was doing at 2am, 4am, and 6am when we went to check on her. So that was a whole night of sleep deprivation for no good reason.
Anyway, she was fine on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday poor K's car broke down (and she'd been SO excited to see a foaling), so obviously Faith decided that Wednesday was the night. She was waxed when she came in that night and began to vigorously stream colostrum around 7. I caught some of it, just in case, but she was getting more and more restless so I thought we were probably close. We grabbed dinner, some snacks, and a Thermos of coffee (the beloved is nothing if not prepared) and camped out in front of her stable around 9pm.
We didn't have terribly long to wait. At 11pm exactly, her water broke, and to my utter relief she lay down and got straight to work. The beloved has done a few calvings, whelpings and hatchings in his time but this would be his first foaling from start to finish in which the foal survived (the poor soul helped me pull a sad little stillborn foal out of a mare at work, too), and he was wide-eyed with wonder and simultaneously a very good practical help. It was an unbelievably special time: Faith, the beloved, the foal, the dark summer night and me.
About 12 minutes after the water broke, Faith was not making much progress.The foal was sticking at the head and knees, as they do, and the head seemed a little bit askew. I took the front legs and did some gentle downward traction in time with her contractions, and at 11:15, the foal came spilling out into my lap.
Faith seemed absolutely shell-shocked. The beloved helped me to clear away the amnion from the foal's face, and she immediately started to breathe and try to sit up: a perfect dark bay filly, already starting to go grey around her eyes. Rene, in the stable next door, immediately began to talk reassuringly to the filly. Faith lay still for a few minutes while I petted and reassured her.
Once she started to look around in confusion, and the beloved helped me to bring the foal around to her head. Immediately, her eyes lit up, and she started to nicker in excitement as she nuzzled and licked her baby.
Faith has always been highly opinionated and I would be lying if I didn't say I was a bit worried about how she'd react to looking after her baby. After all, when her milk just came in, I tried to give her a little scratch around the teats and she gave me such a solid kick over the knee that I couldn't ride for an entire week (a true disaster in my world). But I needn't have worried. The moment she started nuzzling that baby, she was absolutely obsessed.
After maybe ten minutes, with a mighty effort she expelled the placenta. That breaks the record for quickest third stage of labour I've ever seen, so kudos to you Faith and thank you - the Friesians were driving me nuts with retained placentas this year. Then she promptly got to her feet and started encouraging her foal to rise.
The filly had been making wobbly attempts to get up for a few minutes now, and before midnight, the little lady was on her feet and wobbling madly around the stable as they do.
People say one shouldn't "mess with" the newborn foal in these early hours, but honestly, we have messed with the mare all her life and will mess with that foal for the rest of its life so unless the mare is aggressive I'm pretty hands-on with the newborn. Faith was far from aggressive, sometimes leaning into me as if for a bit of reassurance in this bewilderingly wonderful new experience. So the beloved steadied her head a little and I plugged the baby in to drink, still worried about the amount of colostrum that was escaping. There was no trouble at all with this - by 12:30 that foal had a good bellyful of milk and was starting to figure out how to do it herself, and Faith was standing still to let her. I spent a little more time doing some imprinting on feet/girth/ears of the foal before going back to sleep. By 2:30, the filly was rising and suckling very strongly on her own.
It was a pretty textbook birth although I'm glad I was around to help Faith out a little when the baby got a bit stuck. I think she could have done it on her own but it might have had a few complications. She did tear a tiny bit as it was, not enough to warrant stitches, but a few days of antibiotics and anti-inflammatories were in order and it healed within days. The foal had slightly weak front legs for the first day, but they sorted themselves out very quickly.
Faith was super overprotective for a full week after the foal was born so we kept them in a small paddock until she seemed to relax and we turned them out with Rene and Rose, which made both foals extremely happy.
Her owner named her Daydream Southern Lass - Lassie for short. Lassie became the 517th foal bred by Daydream Stud, which has been in existence for 53 years out of the Nooitgedachter breed's 70 years of existence. She is a special little lady and we adore her!
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