Everything I Know About Babies I Learned from My Pet Goat

Kind of…

It’s four in the morning and an angry, hungry bleating has awoken me from slumber.

I look at the clock and realize that yes, it’s that time.

I get up, blearily mix up some formula, put it in a clean bottle with a fresh nipple, make sure it’s the correct temperature, then head toward the sound of wailing hunger.

I open the barn door and shove a bottle into a baby goat’s mouth.

Some thirty-eight years later it’s “déjà vu all over again” (as the late-great Yogi Berra might have said).

A hungry bleating. Mixing formula. Four in the morning.

Yeah, I’ve been here before. Just replace an animal’s stall with a baby’s crib.

Don’t think that this is a complaint. As a confessed morning person, I’m often up early, and I kind of enjoy these little morning rituals.

Like caring for our pet goat Peggy those many years ago, there’s a warm, satisfying feeling in feeding a baby animal — including these odd little things called baby humans. Plaintive noises cease. I witness the sense of satisfaction on the little creature’s face.

As I’m feeding baby Jack, I reflect and realize there are a few other parallels in caring for an…