Sunday June 2 -- Anxiety and Insight

I was worried sick about this morning. I had been booked about 6 weeks earlier to lead worship for Springbank United Church this morning. This was the original due date the vet had given me and in light of that I had asked if there was anyway I could switch Sunday's with someone; it turned out to be impractical. They offered to ask someone else but I won't make that kind of commitment and then break it for any reason. I had even arranged for my mother-in-law, who used to breed toy poodles, to come in and be with Cocoa as a dog-sitter if the puppies hadn't arrived yet or had just arrived.

We decided that having a dog-sitter for four hours that day wasn't necessary in light of how well everyone was doing but as I left I was pretty anxious; this would be the first time Cocoa had been left alone for more than 1/2 hour.

My sermon was about the power of gratitude and I have to tell you I was feeling a lot of it; no more puppies had been lost and Cocoa was becoming better and better at this mom gig. Cocoa is also eating more food than the last couple of days and looking less and less like she's starving; she lost a lot of weight during the birthing process -- I suspect she was as much as five pounds less than her pre-pregnancy weight after the puppies had all been born.

It turned out that I had nothing to worry about. When I got home everyone was fine and I spent the afternoon cat napping to try and catch up on my sleep. I realized we'd have to figure out what was bothering Cocoa at night so much or it might be weeks before I'd get a decent sleep. That evening we discussed it and we decided that maybe it was just that the whelping box was downstairs in the kitchen while we were upstairs sleeping. Cocoa normally sleeps in our room on a dog bed beside our bed. It will be interesting to see if that makes any difference.