Premature baby guinea pigs?

Question
Hello,
I had a pregnant guinea pig. And today at 6:00 in the morning, she gave birth to 4 baby guinea pigs. They didn't have their fur and their eyes were tiny. They didn't last for long, the first one lived for 5 seconds and the second one lived for 8 seconds, the third lived for less than half a minute and the last one lived only for one minute. They stopped breathing. The mother is fine and she doesn't seem to have anything wrong with her. We gave her a bath and we put the babies into a box.  I don't understand what happened. She wasn't ready to give birth to them yet. She was only 7 or 8 weeks pregnant with them. So please help me with this. I'm so sad and I sobbed till 10:00 A.m. Thanks so much for your help!
Angie

Answer
well first off sorry for your loss.

guinea pigs tend to be pregnant for 60-70 days give or take, and that is not even considering when they were concieved which has a 15 day varience.
they were most probably premature unless they wee a hairless breed because guinea pigs are born eyes open and fully furred.

you dont really know why this happens, sometimes it just happens, stress, poor diet and poor living conditions make it more likely that something will go wrong, but sometimes you can do all the right things and it still goes wrong. 20% of all births result in a lost litter, often the mother as well.

chances are your female is fine, complications only come usually when they cannot deliver.
make sure you feed her plenty of fresh veg and soaking a cuttle fish bone in her water wont hurt and will help replenish her calcium levels.

if you intend to breed her again I would recommend leaving her to it, but keeping an eye on her, her cleaning the babies up is as important to her replenishing her nutrition as it is making sure the babies can breath.

hope this helped