Birth Companion... to a Pig

It was curiously moving, keeping Bella company while she was in labour. She lay at full stretch on her side along the length of the sty, her head poking out of the door. Bella’s a big pig.

If I lifted up her ear, I could see the expression on her face - one of pained concentration, brow furrowed, lip slightly curled. As a woman who’s been in labour twice, it inspired in me a tremendous sense of fellow feeling, more than I might have expected, especially with a pig. 

There she lay, her breath coming in and out in great gusts. At intervals, her breathing deepened and she whined on every exhalation. Then she strained and lifted her tail slowly, and out slithered another piglet.

My Other Half went off to do the school run. I had a bad head-cold and had been in bed for three days. My sinuses had produced a bio-hazardous effluent which had crusted over the bottom of my nostrils, and my hair had formed a large cleft on the back of my head. I’d been given the choice: pick up the kids or stay with the labouring pig? I chose the pig.

All was quiet and warm in the sty. I sat on the bar at the side wall which provided the piglets with a safety channel, somewhere to escape from mum’s bulk when she lay down. Sows frequently kill their offspring by lying on them, as we were shortly to learn for ourselves.


When my Other Half returned, I grudgingly gave up my warm place in the stall. Impatient for the arrival of the next piglet, he began pulling bedding straw around, tugging it out from underneath her, and clearing under the bar across the piglets’ corner. Bella suddenly heaved herself up on her haunches, shook her head a little blearily and looked round as if to say ‘What’s going on back there?’


My mothering instincts kicked in. ‘Stop that, you’re annoying her! She’s been lying peacefully, labouring away while you weren’t here. Now you come back and start rearranging the bedding. Let her get on with it, man!’


It’s not enough that I’ve cooked for the pigs and rubbed their hoary bellies with sticks as they stretch out for a good rub in the dust. Now I’m identifying with them when they’re in labour.

Late in the afternoon she slowed down and delivered the afterbirth. We returned to the house for a cup of tea believing she’d finished. Evidently she hadn’t. We later found two more piglets half concealed in the straw, cold and dead. It’s a sad sight to see, the perfect but lifeless form of a piglet. Full of sorrow, we took them away.


That day Bella birthed eleven piglets, nine of which remain. For a first time, that’s quite an achievement. We can’t wait to help them do it all over again, believing we’ll know better how to keep them all safe the next time. Whereas Rosie and Bella knew intuitively what to do, for us it was a learning experience.

I left it for a moment to catch its first breath, cough and wheeze to life and feel the warmth of its mother’s body. As the cord slipped out and it began to wriggle about, I picked it up and moved it to the corner under the heat lamp. Here its brothers and sisters cleaned it up a bit, nibbling away the birth sac, nudging and climbing over it and generally pushing it around curiously until it showed more vigorous signs of life.