Five reasons why raising sheep is bootcamp for parenthood:

When I was pregnant with LW, I used the phrase, "oh, it's just like with the sheep" so many times that my husband joked my daughter might come out as a lamb.   Though he wasn't serious, I meant what I was saying, because I really felt (and feel) that raising animals throughout my childhood and adult years helped prep me for what was ahead.  As it turns out, as I reflect back on the last year and a half of adjusting to being a parent, I can confidently say that I was right.  So here's my top five reasons why raising animals (sheep, in particular) is great for any kid who thinks they might have a vocation to marriage and family.

5)  A crash course in the birds and the bees:

 I continue to be dumbfounded at the number of people out there who don't seem to associate reproduction with.. well.. reproduction!  You see, I grew up with a very mammalian view of sex.  Long before the rushing hormonal surges of adolescence, I already knew what happened when a ram jumped a fence to get in with a ewe (or a stallion escaped and got in with a mare, or our female cat escaped into the night when in heat... these sort of incidents unfortunately happened regularly).  I knew that the phrase "I don't think anything happened," most often resulted in a lamb or two, five months down the line.  Actually, I don't think anyone ever even had "the talk" with me; it wasn't necessary.  I knew where babies came from: baby horses, baby cats, baby dogs, baby sheep, and as a result, though I didn't think about it a whole lot, baby humans as well.  Most importantly, raising a variety of mammals instilled in me an almost visceral understanding of just how easily pregnancy can happen: the only surprise for me has been to realize exactly how difficult it can be for humans to get pregnant as compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.  Having all of this safely in mind before the aforementioned hormonal surges definitely helped me to understand that sex and babies were intrinsically connected, and that I shouldn't engage in one until I was ready for the other.

4)  Bottle lambs: infinitely more realistic than Baby Alive, Flour Babies, or Egg Babies:

My family has often joked that the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy is to give every teenage boy and girl a bottle lamb of their very own to take care of.  A few nights of getting up every two hours with a bottle goes a long way towards fostering an accurate idea of what babies are really like.  Since one or more of these bottle babies appeared at least every couple of years growing up, I got a lot of experience in this department (kids who grew up in families with regularly appearing new babies doubtless could identify).  Bottle lambs are also a great advertisement for breastfeeding, because it immediately becomes clear how much easier it is to be the momma sheep, with milk always at the ready, than to be the surrogate mom, having to mix milk-replacer and sterilize bottles.  Also, to put a more positive spin on the experience, it's pretty easy to bond with a bottle lamb; you get to experience the transformative power of nurturing emotion, without the lifelong commitment.

3)  Patience, patience, patience, with a bit of sneakiness thrown in:

There's nothing like spending years dealing with some of the most dense creatures on earth (there is a really good reason why God describes the stubbornness of Israel with the metaphor of sheep) to work on your patience.  While I'll freely admit that kids (and husbands, and family, and coworkers, and even random people ahead of you in line) force you to exercise the virtue at a whole new level), sheep can really help you to learn how to be patient with someone much stupider, or more stubborn, than you.  They're also a good case study in how best to bribe, lure, and herd someone in the direction that you want.  And, in the tangentially related practical realm of performing disagreeable procedures (tooth brushing, nail clipping, and bathing) gently, firmly, and most importantly quickly, I'm grateful every day that I had a chance to practice on a sheep, before I had to do them for a baby.

2)  Getting past the "yuck" factor:

This is actually a biggie.  Parenthood is messy.  There's just no way around it.  There are all sorts of bodily fluids and secretions, flying food, nothing stays where it is put, not to even mention the messy emotions involved.  I won't say that raising animals is exactly the same; I've never yet seen a sheep capable of quite the sort of whirlwind destruction that my one year old is currently practicing, but by and large, I have to say that sheep pack a bigger punch in the "yuck" department than babies do.  No offense to any of you who have ever had to deal with a diaper incident of epic proportions, but I guarantee I've dealt with worse from the sheep.  I can think of quite a lot of ways in which this is so, but the phrase "fly strike" takes the cake.  If you don't know what it is, consider yourself fortunate.  If you want to know, Google it, but not if you have a weak stomach.  Once a person can handle that sort of "yuck" without batting an eye, parenthood feels like a step in an easier direction.  Plus, with all the random animal injuries I've had to doctor or assist doctoring over the years, I'm able to keep a much cooler head when my daughter gets banged up. 

1)  The business of being born in a barn:

While I definitely mean every single one of the proceeding reasons, this is the one that I feel was by far the most important to me (aside, perhaps, from the "yuck" preparation, which incidentally has its own place in the labor and delivery room).  I can't explain adequately, or strongly enough, how well having delivered quite literally generations of lambs prepared me for giving birth to my own daughter.  I think the line that actually elicited the whole "you're not giving birth to a sheep" response from my husband was when I said that I was pretty sure I could deliver my own baby if I needed to.  You see, from a very young age (I think at least 8 or 9, if not before), I was designated as the one with the "smallest hands," the one who would do the actual work of delivering stuck lambs, sorting out tangled twins, in short, being the obstetrician for our sheep.  Even once my hands were no longer the smallest, I was deemed the most experienced, and so continued being the delivery girl.  Not only did this acquaint me quite well with most of the scientific facts surroundings pregnancy, labor, delivery, colostrum, etc, and with the labor process, with what is normal and what isn't, with the fluids and smells (sorry if this makes anyone squeamish, but it's true - mammalian birth comes with fluids and smells), but it also gave me a strong belief in the ability of the female body to do what comes naturally.  I learned that the best birth, by far, is the untampered with birth; that females do best when allowed to labor undisturbed.  I learned to approach birth with the perspective of a midwife; most importantly, I learned not to be afraid of birth.

 Now, I'll admit, it was hard to keep that perspective when I was pregnant.  What perhaps helped the most was stumbling upon the film The Business of Being Born, which reaffirmed everything that I'd instinctively absorbed growing up, all the timeless truths that were being crowded out of my head by the perspective of a society that sees labor as something wrong with a woman, something that must be managed closely and carefully, and medicated away if possible.  The film jolted me back to all my experiences delivering lambs; of easing slippery, wet babies from their laboring mamas in the quiet of a barn (usually at night, and usually in the middle of the winter; as a side note, this also gave me a great appreciation for what Mary must have gone through in Bethlehem).   Consequently, I wasn't really afraid when I went into labor; I was able to trust my instincts in a way that I don't would have been possible if trusting the progression of labor hadn't become essentially instinctual for me.  I wasn't afraid when my water broke in the middle of the night; the fluid, the scent, the adrenaline kick of "this is it!" brought me back to so many nights of jumping out of bed and then sitting quietly on an overturned grain feeder, and watching a ewe quietly labor from the dim light of a heat lamp.  I knew how the ewes seemed to turn inwards as the contractions deepened, grunting quietly against the pain; I knew that the mammalian body is made to give birth; I knew that they were able to do it, and that I could, too.

 So there you have it.   I'm not necessarily advocating raising sheep (it pretty much can be a huge pain).  But I would wholeheartedly advocate giving your children the chance to interact with other mammals in some way; if possible, at the very least, give your daughters the chance to see other mammals birth and mother their young.  In a world where we as a human race have lost much that we once knew when it comes to our mammalian (i.e. those who bear live young and produce milk with which to feed those young) nature, you'll be giving them a great foundation if and when they have children of their own.

Mountains and Plateaus

Yesterday, as I pulled into our local grocery store, it hit me: motherhood is just like driving standard.

OK, before you dismiss this thought as out of left field, or at best a weird over-generalization, let me explain myself.  I alternate between driving our two cars - one of which is standard, the other is automatic; in the beginning, I made the decision between cars based on whether there were any hills between me and my destination, but now it's whichever car my husband has left home, or which I can get out of the driveway quicker. 

Yesterday, I was in the automatic.  I pulled into the parking lot, and in a reflex move that many veteran standard transmission drivers can relate to, I found myself pushing in a non-existent clutch with my left foot as I hit the brake to stop.  Then, as I entered the store, another reflex had me pulling out a car with a seat to put my daughter in - only to realize that I'd left her at home with her dad.  That's when I realized the strange similarity between these two seemingly disparate pieces of my life.

You see, we bought a standard transmission car right after our daughter was born last year.  If you're like me and didn't learn to drive standard back when you were learning to drive, you'll know that to learn later on is basically tantamount to learning to drive all over again.  All of the easy familiarity you take for granted in say, driving across town, up a hill, and through a few stop signs, suddenly disappears, and everything requires this ridiculous focus, concentration, and energy.  It feels like you'll never be able to master shifting while doing or thinking about anything else; it feels like you'll never be able to really drive again. 

For me, motherhood - bringing a tiny newborn baby home from the hospital - felt exactly the same way.  Everything I'd ever taken for granted in my adult life, such as showering, going to bed, waking up, dressing, eating - all the fundamental basics, as well as a whole lot of tangentials, suddenly became painfully difficult, even occasionally impossible, to accomplish.  I wasn't sure how I'd ever be able to focus on anything else except this all-consuming thing called being a Mom; I wasn't sure if I'd ever feel like I was really living again, and not just checking off the check boxes of what LW needed done for her each day.

And yet, as steep as the learning curve in both areas has been, I feel like in some ways I'm finally seeing how it's possible.  My automatic reactions in the parking lot and store yesterday prove it:  driving a standard has become second nature, and in like manner, so has being a Mom.  I know that whenever we have our next baby, he or she will create a whole new learning experience, and things will be chaotic for a while.  But thank heavens, I never have to bring my first baby home from the hospital again.  The next time around, I'll already know that a time of stability will eventually arrive: that we'll reach the plateau in between mountains, and will eventually learn to re-balance this crazy thing called life.  We're always moving onwards and upwards, and God never gives us too much time in these plateaus, so I'm always so thankful for the gift of realizing when I'm in one: to take time to rest in the feeling that I've at least temporarily mastered most of the tasks required of me on a day to day basis.

What about you all?  What metaphors have you found apt for the transitions and challenges in your lives?  Are you in a plateau, or fighting your way up a mountain?