Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Emma's Emergency Cesarean Section

After hearing her symptoms Dr. Hoerr felt the only option for Emma would be Cesarean section. The amount of green fluid she was losing was the deciding factor. The first puppy's birth sac had ruptured prematurely. Puppy's will aspirate and die when that happens.
The drive over to Morton took over an hour with the blowing snow and icy roads. Our car has snow tires on but that didn't matter the morning traffic heading to work was at a crawl, everyone was afraid to go much faster since all over the highway were cars and trucks in the ditch. Dr. Hoerr had plenty of help leaving me free to take pictures and video the entire surgery.
 Above is Emma's uterus and below the puppy that was stuck in the birth canal. Notice the covering of green slime. A puppy does not usually survive if the sac is broken in advance of birth. 
 Compare the picture above with the picture below. Even though these are both brindle pups the pup in the bottom had an intact sac.
The video below shows the entire C-section. Watch it to see the surprise. Although this is fair warning it is pretty graphic.

The biggest surprise happened once Dr. Hoerr had already closed the uterus and was about to close up Emma. He found 2 more puppies up in the first horn and had to open back up the uterus to remove them. That is not the surprise in the video by the way.
While I was busy at Dr. Hoerr's Rhoda, Emily and Karin were filling in for me here. They were able to move 2 new round bales in and watched Braelyn and Taegan. Karin and Rachel worked on the micro house almost finishing sheeting the inside walls.
I'm very glad to have Emma and the pups home. Emma is pretty lethargic but is nursing the pups. She doesn't feel well, drank then promptly vomited it up in the whelping box. Sure hope she starts to feel better, those pups are going to get pretty demanding soon. I really need to get some sleep and am praying the night is uneventful.

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