Hello Everyone!

I've been dying to write a post, but haven't had a chance until now.

Thursday morning 7:30, I took Stevie out to potty and when she did her water dropped out. I though, "Oh
s$%t...this is way to early!!" Her first due date wasn't until the 18th. So, we waited for contractions...none came...waited longer...still nothing. At 2:30 after talking with my vet multiple times and her breeder we took her into my vet (Allisonville Animal Hospital). Luckily, they were having a pretty slow day.

Within 20 minutes of arrival, she was having a C-section. The vets were extremely worried that these puppies were way too premature and would not be fully developed. The first one they pulled out looked young...too young and took over an hour to start breathing--one other puppy appeared to be the same age and also would not breathe on his own. The other 3 were well developed and screaming as soon as they came out of the uterus!!

Thankfully, truly a miracle, all the puppies were healthy and surprisingly large and well developed for their prematurity. They weighed in at 3.1-3.7 ounces a piece--that's a good weight even for a normal size chihuahua litter! Many times, litters this large have 1 or 2 pups that are 2 ounces or under. The vets and numerous staff did an excellent job at reviving the difficult babies! As of today, they are all doing fantastic--they are fat and quiet.

Come to find out, the reason Stevie had no contractions is that her placentas had not yet detached from the uterine wall because it was so early. Thus, she lost a lot of blood post surgery. Those babies were just not ready to be born, but what can you do?? She is doing much better today. She was very weak after surgery, but is back to her old self now.

At first Stevie wanted NOTHING to do with those babies--she would growl at them and even try to bite them. Can't blame her, she was very sore and very weak from the surgery. But, at around 4 in the morning on Wednesday, she discoverd that she needed to clean them...and every since then, her learning curve has skyrocketed!

Unfortunately, because Stevie went into labor so early and the puppies were delivered by C-section, she hasn't developed much milk. We are hoping in the next couple of days that it will really start flowing. I was up for over 24 hours straight, with approximately 1-3 hours of interrupted sleep during that time. I have to feed these babies every 2 hours and also let them suck on Stevie. You can see from the pics that she is starting to nurse--it's supply and demand...the more they suck, hopefully the more milk she'll produce. Either way, I will still have to supplemental feed since there are so many!

Check out the pics I posted today. Don't worry...nothing graphic or gross.

Wish us luck that these babies continue to thrive and do well. We were very blessed to actually have 5 healthy babies. As Dr. Ward said, "It was an act of God that all these babies are so healthy!" Whatever it was, we are very thankful to have been so lucky!