Labor sitting with Brownie yesterday afternoon. 

After a couple of hours, things weren't progressing at all. So I called my friend, Sara, for a consultation. Both of us have enough experience that we feel comfortable leaning on each other for advice. We agreed to let her labor longer. Because it really did seem like she would start progressing any minute. But we were wrong, That was the wrong choice. If you are sure your goat has been in active labor, pushing, don't let it go more than two hours. Brownie went 6 before we called a vet. I'm putting it in writing so I remember this next year.

Six hours of pushing put all of us: Brownie, her unborn babies, the vet, our family, and Sara's family in the barn in the dark late last night watching the vet perform a service I can hardly describe. The violence of it is truly like Revolutionary War surgery. The vet was digging around inside Brownie's uterus for about 10 minutes -- deeper than her forearm. Honestly, I can't describe it. It was awful.

Except that it was an absolute solution to Brownie's distress. And now we have 3 healthy babies. I am trained as a midwife and Sara is an EMT. Discussing the whole thing while holding adorable sleeping babies, this morning, we agreed on several main points:

You think you remember how it went last year. You don't. Write it down.
Coconut oil is not a good lubricant for a cold night in a barn
Neither of us could have ever, EVER, have done what the vet did.
Ruminants may push for exactly two hours and no more. 
Veterinarians earn their keep. And God bless them.

Today was a much nicer kind of day. A worn out, napping kind of day. But pure baby bliss.