The miracle of birth.

Meet Leia, a 6-year-old poodle who was brought by her very concerned adoptive parents to DogLover Animal Hospital for what appeared to be an extremely difficult delivery.

Now, there is no such thing as a "right" or "correct" birth, so don't panic if you ever see that your pet takes a while to bring her puppies into the world. But if, like Leia, it has already been over 5 hours and still no progress has been made, you may want to contact your vet as soon as possible.

Several complications can occur if a patient's labor goes on too long (both for her and her babies as well), so immediatly after we heard how long it had been since the process began, we decided to order an ultrasound as soon as possible to find out exactly what we were dealing with.

That's how we came to learn that the puppies suffered from fetal distress, a very serious and potentially lethal complication; basically, Leia's babies had been inside her for so long that they were beginning to suffocate. We had to act soon!

With such high stakes, we knew there was no time to assist Leia through a natural birth, instead we had to perform an emergency C-section. We could only hope that we were still on time.

For all pet parents, there is no surgery to save the lives of our adoptive children in which minutes don't feel like hours (Leia's parents won't let us lie), but at DogLover we perform operations like this on a regular basis; we knew the situation and we were confident that we could help.

And that was the case: before she knew it, Leia was mother to 6 beautiful, healthy puppies. A series of antibiotics, some painkillers, and a couple of hours for the anesthetic to wear off later, Leia and her entire family were able to return home as if nothing had happened.

Shortly after, Leia came back to visit us to remove the stitches from her surgery, and her adoptive mother took the opportunity to share that the puppies were doing fine. Happy endings like this are the reason for doing this job!