Madge has had a hard weekend. She started her pre-labour Sunday morning and it continued slowly up until Tuesday (yesterday).



At about 1pm Tuesday afternoon she started to pant heavily and show the classic signs of wanting to nest (hiding under cupboards and in corners). This continued throughout the day. Mammy and I stayed up with her all night but at 3am she eventually fell asleep and Mammy told me to go to bed.

This morning (Wednesday), she was on day 65 of her pregnancy. We couldn't wait any longer in case harm came to Madge and the puppies. Mammy, Jemma and I took Madge down to the vets (where Mammy works) and she had to have a cesarean.



She'd shown some very strange behaviour. She'd panted for about twenty-four hours non-stop but had not shown any urge to push. During her last litter she delivered fine in the normal way and we'd been hoping she could do it again. But unfortunately that was not to be.

When the vet opened her up, I heard her say, "What have you been breeding?" A couple of minutes later Mammy was rubbing a wet puppy, which was about the size of a Pug puppy when it is about a week old. Once the mucus was out of its mouth I was handed the first of our new puppies.



She's a girl and looks just like her big sister Sweepie. We've called her Dora Dolores (Dolores for short ;D).

Once Dolores was warmed up and safely with her Auntie Jemma, I popped my head into the operating theatre and watched the vet pull another huge puppy from Madge's stomach. "You're guesses were all wrong," she joked. "There's only two."



The second, and last puppy, was also a girl, who looks a lot like her mother; she's a litter darker than Dolores as well. We've called her Ruby Wednesday (Wednesday for short ;D).



While Madge was stitched back up and woken up, the twins woke up as well and started bleating. They shouted and shouted for attention. For the record Wednesday is the loudest; Dolores whimpers more than screams. Then they decided to start trying to crawl out the basket! They were very adventurous for puppies who were only fifteen minutes old.

Once Madge was feeling up to it, we bundled ourselves back into the car and drove home. The puppies and Madge went into the cage and Mammy encouraged the girls to suckle.





Madge is fussing at the moment and doesn't seem to want to feed the babies. This is a risk with cesarean births. It might be just that she's very sore and tired and that when she's feeling better she'll be more inclined to feed them. Last time she was great so we're not worrying too much about that yet.

The other dogs have come in and sniffed the puppies through the cage - obviously they're not allowed too close yet. They were all very interested and stood listening to the babies bleating for quite some time.

Madge and the puppies are asleep now. As is my mother who hasn't slept properly in about four days now. I'm exhausted but I can't sleep in the day so I'll just wait until night-time.

So, I am now the proud auntie/nanny to two strapping young girls. There was no way Madge could have passed them naturally because they were just too big (we still don't know how that happened considering she went to the same dog as last time and she had eight normal-sized puppies then), which at least makes the cesarean option feel better.

Labels: dolores, labour, Madge, photos, wednesday

By Ys
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Labour Pains

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Sunday, 28 October 2007 | 10:34