Meanwhile...

While life continues at the aforementioned hectic pace, here's a little something to tide all my readers over: I've got a guest post up over at Catholic Mothers Online today.  Go on over and read about 4-H: is it 4-U?

I should of course mention that I could have written so much more about 4-H.  We're supposed to keep it under 900 words, so I did, but I had to trim like crazy to even meet that.  How do you sum up something that shaped your life so dramatically?  Something that has given you a substantial number of the skills you are proud of, many of the friends you hold dear, and the lion's share of memories from your childhood?  We, of course, were probably a more-than-typically involved 4-H family.  We didn't "do" team sports, and 4-H was our substitute.  The year turned according to the 4-H calendar: monthly meetings, Sheep Camp, Addison Field Days, VT State Fair, Eastern States Exposition... events that I attended nearly every year for almost 20 years, and that now, several years later, I still miss, and yet can picture with incredible clarity in my mind.

Anyway, check out the post.  Yes, the photos are vintage shots of me, circa... 1998, from actual sheep show events (reason enough to check it out!).  But seriously, if you have 4-H-age children, or even if you don't (it's never too early to start planning ahead!), I encourage you to think about whether this is a program that might fit into your family's life.  We loved it, and I bet you would, too.

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.