Depression; Bleeding after giving birth.

Question
My sister received a guinea pig from a pet shop pregnant, she has taken very good care of it held it every day and became very close to it. This morning she woke to find the mother pig in the corner of her cage clearly distressed, lethargic, and limp. With two larger still born babies, both babies had been cleaned and the sacs removed.

Worried about the mother we took her to an emergency vet, who said they couldn't feel anymore babies inside her and prescribed her antibiotics encase of infection. Since then she hasn't been moving much at all, won't eat even her favorite foods and has been bleeding.

Could this be a side effect from giving birth and loosing the babies? My sister is beside herself with grief and has held her in a blanket since yesterday morning. We've also tried putting her with a baby pig from another mothers litter we accidentally had (Both pet shop pregnant at the same time.) She moved closer to the baby but remained limp. We do not really have money to go to an exotic specific clinic and the closest is 4 hours away.

Any advice would help and be greatly appreciated thank you so much for your time.

Answer
Sometimes if a baby is malpositioned the mother is just unable to pass it in quickly enough. The babies born after that are often already gone because of lack of oxygen prior to birth as the mother has struggled so long to deliver the first baby.

I would have expected the vet to give her a shot of pitocin in case there were retained placentas or tissue left inside. When that happens the mother quickly becomes septic. They don't usually survive because the kidneys have shut down and they soon go into total system failure. The fact that she is so limp is a good indication of sepsis.  At this point the antibiotics will not help.

This is not because you did anything wrong. The mortality rate in cavies is very high, which is why we discourage people from breeding their pets. It's so painful to have to go through the loss and sometimes no matter what you've done these things just happen.

It's not a side effect of losing her babies. Most small animals simply move forward in situations like this. They don't suffer depression as large animals do. Prey animals such as guinea pigs don't have the luxury of time to mourn their losses. Because they have predators that will quickly take advantage of them they must move on and not look behind.

Even though they are domesticated guinea pigs still have those natural instincts that they would in the wild. That's why they are able to get over these things quickly to protect themselves.

Please assure your sister that she has no fault in what's happened. It's not because she was pregnant when you got her. It's just one of those terribly hard statistics that leave us unable to understand. My heart goes out to her because I truly understand how she's feeling.