I have spent a lot of my life being famous adjacent. Sometimes more adjacent than others.

I’ve worked with a bunch of well-known people. REALLY legendary folks. You know the kind I’m talking about. The people you mention – I try not to- and others go, “OMG! What are they like?”

(Note: they may or may not remember me. Sometimes even while I was standing next to them. I spent a week doing radio/tv and other media with David Crosby who never bothered to remember my name. He called me “publicity girl.”)

These people have done stuff. Created timeless music. Written insanely good songs, books and directed classic movies and television shows.

Those kinds of people.

I have zero experience with reality tv stars. I’ve never watched a full episode of any of those shows, though I admit I’ve seen trailers of “F*Boy Island.”

They make me throw up a little in my mouth.

Basically I try to live by the rule that if I want to waste time with useless creatures, I play with my dogs and horses.

Strike that; the horses and dogs aren’t useless. They make me laugh and bring joy into the world.

But sometimes being an adult means you have to be tolerant, and do cringey things to ensure that everyone eats.

I HATE adulting. Really, really hate it.

About 16 months I had a come to Jesus moment and had to deal with my reality. That is, I was (and still am) barely working. Being a woman of a certain age, with no discernable skill set, I’m not exactly in demand by anyone for anything.

Though I now walk dogs for money, this is and wasn’t nearly enough to pay for anything necessary.

Like food.

But mostly hay and kibble.

Most pressing was what to do with Layla. She was three, and it was no longer sustainable for her to sit around in a field looking pretty. She needed to learn her job and then something that I’d figure out.

A smart person would have sold her immediately, and that would be the end of it. The fact that I have four horses should prove I’m not smart. Or practical.

Layla is Lucy’s biological daughter, but my late Faith, her half-sister, was her surrogate mother.

The idea of losing Layla, and my last connection Faith, was unbearable. It still is.

Enter a celebrity. We will call her Taylor Swift. (It’s not Taylor Swift.)

Janis rides a little. (She is a model and spends her time getting paid huge sums to wear fancy clothing in exotic locations and shill dull products on commercial sets.)

Her former riding teacher convinced her that breeding her older, saintly, mare would be fun and Instagram worthy. Taylor planned to keep the mare and hopefully photographic foal at my friend A’s farm, where Layla lives.

But horses are not reality shows, and even with the best veterinary care and expensive stallion sperm, Taylor’s mare could not stay pregnant. The search was on to find a young, healthy mare to act as a surrogate so Taylor could fulfil her momentary dream of breeding her own foal.

I got a call from A, who was well aware of both Taylor and my situations.

“Have you thought about using Layla as a surrogate? Taylor needs one. She would pay a small fee, and pick up all of Layla’s expenses until the foal is weaned.” Then A added the kicker, “It will save you a lot of money.”

I didn’t have much time to think it over, but I consulted with my horse trainer and my conscience -putting my filly at risk for someone else’s foal was hard to justify – but ultimately, I agreed.

The fee was enough to send Layla to a trainer for three months while she was newly pregnant, and then give her a full year to mature before she went to full-time work.

 It also took her off my bill for a year. A had me at “It will save you a lot of money.”

Technically horse surrogacy is the same as for human surrogacy. After hormones sync up the donor mare and the surrogate, a fertilized egg is removed from the donor and implanted in the surrogate. Then everyone holds their breath until the 45 day mark, when an ultrasound shows if the embryo is still viable.

The world learned about the results days after I did when Taylor teased it on the family reality show. (Doesn’t every family have one?)

“There’s an embryo!” Taylor crowed in clips that went viral on the internet and The Post’s Page Six. Of course when it came out that what she was expecting, was a foal, not a new Swift, there was an onslaught of memes and disappointed fans. Someone called Layla an equine version of a handmaid.

I had rented my horse out to a reality show. I hang my head in shame.

My phone started pinging immediately with text notifications to watch “Access Hollywood.” The last time that happened to me, Billy Bush was blabbing with Trump before he grabbed a friend on camera.

A great moment for all of us. This time was slightly less traumatizing, at least for me.

Meanwhile, Layla was living her best life. She was residing at the farm where she was raised, sharing a field with four other pregnant mares. I visited four or five times a week.

My only contact with Taylor was having to harass her people to pay me. I don’t blame her; like most really rich folk, she has money managers who pay her bills I wasn’t high on the list. But there were a few months that it looked like I would own the foal.

 If only.

Eventually it was straightened out and I didn’t have any interaction with Jendall or her people for the next 11 months.

You read that right. The gestation period for horses is 11 months.

Layla’s due date was late April. The great thing about artificial insemination is that you know exactly when the foal is due. I cleared my schedule for four weeks around the day, since babies still come when they want. Layla was born four weeks late, hence her registered name, Fashionably Late.

I started to worry about month 10. Layla was huge. Unlike Lucy, she didn’t moan every time she moved, but I was a wreck. In the weeks before Layla was due, three very high profile and valuable racehorse broodmares died giving birth.

I was feeling better and better about this deal. Not.

Layla went to the veterinary clinic a week before she was due, and I visited her every day with carrots.

There were a few glitches at first. Mostly paperwork, but important paperwork. Like if there was a problem and a choice had to be made, it had to be clear that Layla would be saved, not the foal.

I also needed to make sure that when Layla went into labor, I would be called immediately. No matter what time it was.

Horses are prey animals, and tend to give birth at night. Unlike the Swifts, they don’t like an audience. Wild horses can literally stop labor in emergencies and wait until it is safe to deliver.

On April 22 at midnight I got a call from that Layla was in labor. I arrived at the clinic 20 minutes later. She had just given birth to a colt.

He was still wet when I walked into the same stall where four years and three weeks earlier, Layla was born. Layla was relieved to see me and nearly stepped on him to get to me.

That would have been bad.

So I sat in a corner to allow them space. Some mares are viciously protective of their babies and will kick and bite anything that comes between them. Layla has known me since she was mere minutes old; she desperately wanted me to comfort her while she waited for the wet lump to do something.

Anything.

We all waited.

Both my foals were girls, and were on their feet, if shakily within an hour. After the first hour, the colt was still struggling to straighten out his legs while lying down.

I asked the vet tech who was waiting with me if I should be concerned.

“He’s a boy,” she said, as if that explained it all.
“Colts are slower?” I asked. She burst out laughing. “Oh, yeah!”

She was right.

I spent the next few hours taking tons of adorable video, for Taylor since she was out of town attending the Met Gala. (That’s not a sentence I thought I’d ever write about anyone.)

 Her trainer didn’t want me to have Taylor’s number (Really? Okay then.) and acted as an intermediary. Or translator. Or something. So I sent about six of the videos to the trainer and she forwarded some to Taylor.

 A few turned up on Taylot’s Insta a few days later.

Almost two hours later, we were all losing patience with the colt. He was barely trying to get up. When Layla went over to him to give him a gentle nudge, he bit her. The tech tried to pick him up, but he kept crossing his front legs seconds after she uncrossed them.

Just as I started to think he was a dummy foal he sort of figured it out. (It’s a real thing. Dummy foals cannot stand up, stay up or figure out to eat on their own. They can and often do, die.) He uncrossed his legs and wobbled his way upright before falling over. This time he kept trying, eventually started hopping around like a bunny.

It took another hour or so before the colt figured out how to eat. At first he would grab Layla’s elbow, which obviously was pointless and just pissed her off. Then, when he did discover where the milk bar was, Layla was super sensitive and kept squealing when he tried to drink.

Around 3 am they both got the hang of it and he had a real drink and I finally took a breath.

I thought the hard part was over. I was wrong.

End Part 1