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March 1st: Setting up house...

Here's a quick layout of what I stared at for 18 days... the screen. Actually, I got a lot of reading done. Reading and eating.

There were various camcorder arrangements to get maximum viewing of all portions of the stall. Of course when she finally laid down and delivered the foal, it was impossible to see any part of her since she picked an entirely new spot for the real deal...

All of these photos were made possible by the digital camera lent to me by one Mr. R.T.Poach. He brought food too. I'd eaten already but its only polite to accept gifts. :-)

This is Maureen. She owns the only other horse in the barn, Phoenix, a handsome older Thoroughbred gelding. She was thoughtful enough to bring cookies.

Lynn (in blue) kept me company for many, many nights. Here she and Maureen assess the situation. My mare became quite used to people staring at her.

Lynn uses her degree in science to investigate mammary development. (I made everyone look, see what she's looking at.)

Fussy takes all this rearward-focused attention like a seasoned broodmare. Bad mom that I am, I haven't even brushed the hay out of her forelock for the photo.

There are non-breeders looking at this wondering WHY I would take such an unflattering photo of my mare-turned-science/media-project...

ACTUALLY, this is one of the more useful ones! I kept track of her udder and foal position at this late stage via the handy digital camera. In the first week of march her sides had 'dropped' which indicated the foal had moved into a position preparing to be born... but sometimes it would move OUT of this position. This happened a lot. Between that and the udder variations I had to stay on 'alert' for a good deal of time. But there was plenty of food, so it was ok.

I snuck out to take a picture of her laying down. It was too cute. She's snoring quite loudly here. :-)

I'm including this one because, back in that first week her nightly up/down patterns still had me on edge enough to want to try and mark the momentous occasion. It is 5am here (smaller web pic doesn't show that too clearly but it is ).

The novelty of the 'marking of the moment' was long gone when she actually DID lay down and break water three weeks later.

I hadn't even gotten to the Douglas Adams series book there behind the clock. That was long gone too, three weeks later.

This is the camera arrangement settled on by the end of week one. There is a 2hr tape in the camcorder that had to be rewound every two hours. Since the tripod didn't go nearly as high as was needed to see well into the stall, it had to be up on straw bales and I needed a stool to rewind the tape every two hours. We'd set the alarm each time the tape was restarted, and then pass out. By the third week, I wasn't waking up for the wee hours past 4am. It was a really good thing my sister stayed with me that night because unlike all the other nights, that's when my mare began the pre-labor behavior (she did pre-labor behavior many other nights, but the final night she just picked a later time to start her up/down sequence...). Maiden mares like to stall for as long as possible.

The horse blanket on the straw bale is to prevent horses from nibbling on the straw through the bars. The cord leads off into the room where we all holed up and kept warm (and well fed).