…and early morning.
Carmen had her water break around 3:30 yesterday afternoon. She delivered her first puppy at 6:30 pm—a nice liver girl at 14.5 oz. She took her sweet time to deliver a liver male at 9 pm—a big guy at 16.2 oz. Then we started to have problems. She did a lot of pushing, and delivered an empty sac around 10:30-11 pm, but she just wasn't having any luck getting any puppies to move through the birth canal. We went into the vets around 3 am for a C-section. It was amazingly messy (my first) and way too busy for the five of us (Dr. Hatcher, an assistant, a friend of the vet, and Jen and I). There were an additional nine puppies in there—the one clogging up the birth canal had expired (a liver male), and another gianormous liver male whose sac had ruptured was also gone (he must have been 19 ozs). The remaining black 7 puppies (four males, three females) are all in good shape, although it takes much too much work to get them resuscitated and breathing (squeaking). A couple had us worried for a while.
We got out of there around 5:30. Bottom line is that the puppies are doing well, Carmen is doing well, everyone is nursing and healthy. Smallest pup is 12 ozs (nice size), and we have four over 16 ozs. Carmen looks slimmer, by the way. So the score from last night is:
• Four black males (18.5, 17, 17, 14.3 ozs)
• Three black females (13.2, 13, 12.2 ozs)
• One liver male (16.2 ozs)
• One liver female (14.5 ozs)