Madison woke up and promptly vomited. She only ate half her breakfast. How do they know that today is her due date? So precise.
Spent the day cuddling with Madison. She is clearly in early stage of labor.
4:45pm. Labor advances.
5:18 First puppy is born. It's a girl. Tom give her a purple collar and she weighs in at a whopping 20 ounces.
I call a fellow breeder Jan who teases me that this puppy is already full grown. We know there are only 5-6 puppies
and now we know why. These are going to be big kids. Lila's biggest puppy every was 17 ounces when born.
We're having a heavy wind storm and the lights keep going off and back on. The neighbors call to make sure they aren't the only ones and discover how busy we are in the dark.
6:20 pm A second girl is born. My heart breaks, she is still born and clearly has been gone for a few days. Oh I am so devastated.
6:36pm A third girl is born, no time to mourn the previous girl as this one needs to be cleaned, weighed and her color collar put on her. Tom decides she's pink and she weighs a more reasonable 15.5 ounces. Beautiful ridge and a very elegant girl.
At this point we get a bit of a break and discuss the events so far. We decide since its President's Day we will do a first and give them nicknames. In honor of presidents we name our first girl, Dolly Madison and our elegant pink collared girl, Jackie O.
7:45pm We finally get a boy. He's not breathing when he's born so we rush into action. Tom takes over the 2 girls and I work on the new boy. He has mucus in his lungs. I use all the tools at my disposal, including some mouth to mouth. His heart is beating but breathing is labored at best. Finally call my like line Jane who talks me through tasks on the phone. Jane is a breeder in Arizona, who I recently did newborn babysitting for. We really do help each other out.
8:06pm Another boy enters the world. I'm still busy with FDR "Frankie" so Tom and I switch puppies a couple of times so our new boy, green collar and weighing in at 17.5 ounces gets cleaned up and placed with Madison. New boy is Truman.
Our struggling boy suddenly makes noise. We all breathe better, even Jane, who has been on speaker phone all this time. After more rubbing and nose cleaning our boy is finally breathing on his own. I'm going to watch him like a hawk.
Tom, Madison and the rest of the pack go for some much needed air. I clean the very messy room.
During the night each member of the family got to meet the puppies and all is super good.
Madison likes the whole pack visiting.