hi my pups are 15 days old now and all healthy,eyes open and doing well :)..i have slept by the whelping box with pups and mum for the last few weeks and was just wondering when is the right time when i can leave them and sleep in my own bed at night..i was thinking maybe another week as mum still a bit clumsy..just want to know what other breeders do and think about this

many thanks :)

My plan is to sleep down stairs with mum and pups, when pups need feeding im awake put mum in and once all fed toileted and resting (heat mats used teddies and hot water bottle) i take mum out so we can both get some shut eye. Large breed bitch, clumsy and WILL NEVER leave mum and pups unsupervised in the early days. This may only happen at 2nd week onwards as she may not want to leave them (her mother stayed in with her and the rest of the litter but i had the luxury of us without a child and both off work so we could do shifts, constantly awake watching over). So i will just see how it goes, once i start to wean them i hope to go back to bed! and just come down at several intervals in the night for feeds when pups let me know they want one or mum is anxious to get to them she will sleep with me. I am prepared for this plan to go to pot and be a zombie but OH has booked off from her due date so i have a little buffer if things dont pan out as i would like them to ;)))

usually at 3 weeks I go back to bed and I find I am more than ready for it. By 3 weeks the pups are usually much more mobile and certainly more vocal so if she sat on one I think she would hear the protestations. :)

> at 3 weeks I go back to bed and I find I am more than ready for it

Same here.  Found still listening out for them so on full sleep.  Mum comes up withme for a few hours then in with with them until morning.  She only stayed in with them once.

When i closed the pen off which would make it impossible for mum to get to them, islept downstairs to let her in and out the first two nights to see when she needed.

I waited 3 weeks before I slept in my own bed again. Then I have (and still do) a baby monitor at the side of my bed so I can hear if there's any crying etc

We stay with ours 24/7 until weaned at between 4 and 5 weeks.

I slept with ours until they left    Had a very comfy air mattress for the purpose :-D

With our breed they are very active at an early age and can climb - they get up to all sorts LOL  Safer for me to be there.   

Same here, about 3 weeks. But I'm a very light sleeper and wake a couple of times most nights, so go to check on them when I do. Also we have puppy mad friends in America who spend half their time watching our puppycam when we have a litter and would certainly telephone instantly if they saw a crisis! And we've had 2 small litters, so both times by the time the puppy was that old there was no danger of accidentally squashing.

thanks guys for your responses :)...looks like ill be staying till at least they 4-5 weeks...had 2 rush a pup to the vets on saturday morning as he was doing this awful retching and bringing up bubbles of milk out of his mouth and nose during the early hours...the vet gave him abs and said the cause was probaly drinking to much milk and it went onto his lungs...i was so beside myself but luckily after having a jab of ab he was on the mend straight away and he laps up the oral abs and feeding of mum again...so happy hes ok but gonna stay with them for another couple of weeks :)

sleep with mine until the last one leaving has gone... I find mum is much happier too.

although I do have a single mattress in the whelping room...