Hi all.

So my beauty delivered 5 healthy puppies by emergency c section Wednesday evening. Can i please have your experienced thoughts on our experience?

We had a xray on the Friday (high risk breed), which indicated first puppy was at that time positioned rump first but no other reasons to prevent a natural whelp.
We had restless behaviour/nesting, off food and vomiting from Sunday lunchtime. Tuesday 9am temperature of 36.8, labour began around 3pm. I stayed up all night with her but by 9am the next morning she had failed to progress onto any visible contractions/pushing so i contacted the vet. The practice we went to was not my usual, although we had had a consultation with them previously during pregnancy. They are a large practice, highly recommended by many breeders and highly experienced in ceasers - my vet has only ever done 6, hence the reason for having them in the loop.
When we arrived at 12pm i told the vet i was worried about inertia possibly caused by presentation problems and wanted to opt for a section. Maybe slightly hasty some may think, but i just knew it was going to happen for my bitch. Anyway, the vet refused a section without first checking her progesterone levels to confirm labour. I argued the toss, was it really relevent? Temperature drop? 18+ hours of heavy panting and nesting? But she insisted, so we had it done. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when she came back and told me her level was 10, and she was 100% not going to whelp for at least 48 hours. I asked was there any possibility of the result being inaccurate - absolutely not. She told me to go home and catch up on my sleep. At 1.30pm home we went, thoroughly confused and thinking my girl was just a huge drama queen.
4pm waters go. Now im terrified. Her waters cannot go if shes not anywhere close to labour. Straight round to my usual vet, confirms 2 finger dilation and in very active labour. Advised to give her a chance. Well unfortunately after an hour of pushing, an xray confirmed 2 puppies from either uterine horn both trying to enter the birth canal and straight in for a section at 6pm.

So after my long winded birth story (sorry!) What the hell happened with the progesterone test? Feel so shit i let the vet convince my she wasn't whelping when i knew she was. Thankfully a happy ending with mum and all 5 babies fine, but for others the ending might not be so happy.

Hi

Glad it all worked out in the end for you. The reason i am replying is a follow on about your experience with vets. I am registered with 4 and for the simple reason each one is good at certain things, ie breeding advice whelping advice and just down to price on a simple thing in a booster jab.

I feel vets are a lottery there are good and bad and depends on how far you want to travel for a good one and not to feel all they want from you is your MONEY!!

Like most owners they know there pet better than anyone and i would stick to my guns in knowing when by pet is ok or not. ( needing a C section)

Baffled TBH reverse progesterone testing is a great way of establishing if a bitch is in a state of inertia. Progesterone levels falls and once below 2ng or 6.36nmol/l active labour should occur with in 24 hrs. What scale was she tested in ? 10nmol might be equivocal and a 24hr watch and wait reasonable ?

ng scale. They said test recommendations were to test again in 48 hours. I am wondering whether they lied about the results TBH. There was a notice on the computer system saying *LOW VETS TODAY* and something to the effect of keep theaters/admissions empty. Also come to think of it, the practice manager rang me within an hour of being home and left a message asking how she was doing and asking me to call to discuss what i should expect next? A bit fishy? I would hope a practice as well known as they are wouldn't dream of doing something like that, although maybe i should request a copy of the results?

Something doesn't add up. Was this a full quantative serum progesterone or a semi quantitative In house test kit ?  The in house kits can give very odd reading if out of date, not brought to room temperature correctly ...

I'd doubt it would be full serum progesterone due to time lag with getting results in a whelping situation. 

Sounds like someone mucked up on the in-house test, or perhaps the bitch was not ready, and would have whelped fine in another 24 hours if a section has not been carried out?

Of course f the blood was sent out then the results would have been for the previous day.

Technical question, why cannot vets do serum progesterone themselves???  They do Kidney bloodwork for example would it cost so much more to calibrate for progesterone???

Technical question, why cannot vets do serum progesterone themselves???  They do Kidney bloodwork for example would it cost so much more to calibrate for progesterone???

Yes about 50K ....they would need to purchase the machine that runs progesterone tests ....it is a totally different machine to the one that runs biochem

That's a shame Paris. 

The main reason many of us don't progesterone test (other than disliking having our bitches bled several times) is the inbuilt time lag getting results, and so few vets having in stock or being au fait with the use of the in house premate kits.

Same day quantative progesterone can be obtained by GP vet depending on labs they use, my vet can courier bloods and get result back same day.

Same here from capl. They collect at 9am and get the result at 3.30pm. When Keith Shea does it, it takes 35 mins from the draw until you get your number.

Any lab near Bristol?