We have 7 beautiful babies, 5 boys and 2 girls. I know that is the main information that everyone wants to know and my apologies for not getting this posted earlier, it has been a pretty hectic day.
We arrived for our c section this morning at 10am, my village of helpers was there to assist and I am sure other people coming into my vets office this morning wondered what in the world was going on. My vet is a small practice and her philosophy is she will do c sections, but her concern is for the momma dog and I am responsible for the babies and bringing necessary people to revive and take care of how ever many puppies we think we are having. This relationship has worked well and I am comfortable with it and mostly comfortable with her and her abilities to make sure my bitch is well taken care of.
today we had a new crew of helpers, some that have been through this with me before, some expereienced breeders that have helped with other c sections and a couple of people who wanted to come and help, although they have never done anything like this before, but they are new breeders and appreciated the experience. Overall we had an awesome group of people. As the puppies came out Ben and I hurried them into waiting hands and they worked their magic on reviving and cleaning up the puppies. One of the problems with c sections is that babies can take longer to revive because of the anthesethia, normally I am not concerned about this. But Nevada was fighting the anethesethia with everything she had this morning and although my vet didn't want to had to give her more than normal just to get her under for the surgery. One puppy had made it into the birthing canal, even though Nevada hadn't shown any signs of being in labor and that puppy was the last to be taken out.
This beautiful little angel didn't make it, we worked on reviving him for over an hour, tag teamed on him, rubbed and rubbed, did everything we could and pulled out as much fluid from him as we could, he just could not catch a breath. After Nevada was all closed up and in recovery, my vet even tried and just couldn't get him going. I have never lost a puppy during a c section and have been second guessing and questioning what could I have done differently and the fact is, I don't think there is anything we could have done, unless I was at a facility that had more trained staff, more Repro and Neo Natel equipment and even then who knows if he would have pulled through or not. I tend to believe that things happen for a reason and maybe there was something else going on that we were not aware of, as to why this puppy could not survive.
All of the puppies are beautifully marked, not over done on the white blazes, all have white on all four feet, some just a little bit, but all the toes are white so they are very consistent. All were born at a little over a pound except for one wee little boy that I have now named Stuart Little. Stuart is small weighing in at 8.4 ounces and has a cleft in his lip. We had to spend extra time at the vets office today because we needed to make sure that he could latch on an actually nurse. Dr. Allen gave me a better feeding tube than what I had and made sure that if I need to tube feed him, I could. I have only had one other puppy that had to be tube fed and I was a nervous wreck everytime I did it. I have to say that I have done it twice with him today and I am much more confident with my abilities than the last time I went through having to do this. Stuart is small but he is feisty and he has figured out that if he gets underneath his sibilings and gets the nipple on the bottom that mom is usually laying on, that he cannot be knocked off as easily than if he gets a top nipple. He is small and it doesn't take much to knock him off, but so far and into the night he is doing well and I have faith that he will continue to thrive.
I have spent the majority of the day, watching and making sure he is getting enough to eat and thus haven't had time to write. I was getting ready to take a nap and realized that I am sure those that are following the blog have been anxiously awaiting the news - so I am sorry, I didn't get to this earlier.
tomorrow we will get pictures and I will post them, until then I need to get some rest while I can.
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