On March 12th, my daughter and I were getting ready to leave for a trip. Bags were packed, tea hadn’t even kicked in yet, and the world was still quiet in that eerie 4 a.m. kind of way.
Right before we walked out the door, my daughter said, “I want to go check on Jane Doe.”
Now, Jane Doe wasn’t due for another week. In my mind, this was a quick “she’s fine, let’s go” kind of check. But something told me to say yes. So we grabbed the flashlights and headed out. The cold hit first. Then the quiet. And then… we saw them.
Four babies.
One was already up, dry, walking around, crying loudly like he had opinions about how this whole situation had gone down. The other two… were fading fast. Weak. Barely moving.
And the last one?
Jane Doe hadn’t even cleaned him off. He was soaked… and ice cold.
That’s when everything shifted from “quick check” to full-on emergency mode.
We didn’t even think—we just moved.
We scooped up all four babies and rushed them inside. Towels. Blow dryer. Warming tent. Controlled chaos.
My daughter took over drying and rotating the babies in the warming tent like she’d been training for this moment her whole life. Meanwhile, I focused on the fourth baby—the cold one.
I rubbed. I warmed. I tried.
But he was gone.
Just like that.
We set him aside gently, already knowing we’d take him back out to Jane Doe later. There wasn’t time to process it. The other three needed us.
And in that moment, that’s what homesteading really is.
It’s not the picture-perfect moments. It’s not the cute baby photos.
It’s standing in your bathroom at 4:30 in the morning, trying to bring life back into tiny bodies while your travel plans sit completely forgotten.
It’s heartbreak and hope—at the exact same time.
The first baby was doing great. Strong, loud, and already acting like he owned the place. We named him T1—short for Tiny Tim #1.
T2 and T3… we weren’t so sure about. ( short for Tiny Tim #2 and Tiny Tim #3)
They were tiny. And I don’t mean “small but cute” tiny—I mean shockingly small. About the length of a baby bottle, both weighing under two pounds. In the middle of everything going on, I didn’t even think to grab weight photos, I did take a few photos but Survival mode doesn’t leave much room for documentation.
We just focused on keeping them alive. What felt like days of sitting there working on them was really only a few hours. Time does something strange in moments like that—it stretches and blurs all at once. But eventually, the darkness started to lift, and the sun began to come up.
And somehow… they were standing.
Wobbly. Weak. But standing.
They had no teeth and couldn’t suck, which meant everything was going to be harder. I looked at my daughter and told her the truth, even though I didn’t want to say it out loud:
“They might not make it. They’re just so small.”
But we weren’t done trying.
For the next 24 hours, we set alarms and took shifts. Every two hours, around the clock, we used a syringe to give them just a few drops of colostrum at a time. Slow and steady. Careful not to overwhelm them.
(I’m still not comfortable tube feeding yet, so this was the best we could do.)
Meanwhile, we made the decision to take T1 back out to Jane Doe. He was strong, alert, and already starting to figure out how to nurse. He had a real chance with his mom, and she needed at least one baby back with her.
Then there was T4.
The one we couldn’t save.
We brought him back out to Jane Doe so she could have that moment—to understand, to mourn in her own way. It’s one of the hardest parts of this life, but also one of the most important. Animals understand loss, and they deserve that closure just as much as we do. So we stood there quietly, giving her that time… while inside, two impossibly tiny babies were still fighting.
And we were right there with them.
These blog post about T2 and T3 will be continued.! Please follow along to find out more about them.
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Backyarding And Kids 
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