Glad to hear that Livi's eating. She's like all of us, prefers Mom's home cooking to hospsital food. Kiss those babies for me.
I found a couple of articles that specifically refer to spaying a lactating dog, answers below. And found several on cats as well. The articles did say that it takes weeks for the hormones that cause lactation to work their way out of the female's system. They don't instantly disappear when the uterus is removed. Vets are more concerned with getting milk into the incision area and also with excess bleeding because the blood vessels in the mammary area are larger. One article mentioned doing a side incision spay to avoid this.
Q.Is it okay to have my pet spayed if she is still lactating?
A.Spaying a lactating (producing milk) female is generally not recommended. Even if the puppies or kittens are weaned, the mother may still be producing a small amount of milk. In most circumstances, veterinarians will wait to spay the mother until she has stopped milk production (usually about 2 weeks after the young are weaned). If a female is spayed while still lactating, the incision in the abdomen may cut into some of the
mammary tissue, resulting in milk flowing into the incision site. This can interfere with visualizing the internal organs and may complicate the healing process. In addition, there may be additional bleeding because of the larger blood vessels in the area of a milk producing gland.
8j. FAQ 5 - My pregnant dog needs a caesarean (C-section) - can she be spayed at the same time?
It is possible to desex a female dog after the puppies have been removed by caesarean section, however, a lot of veterinarians don't like to do this if it can be avoided. Most vets prefer to close the uterine incisions and close the dog's abdomen as soon as possible and have the female dog return to the vet clinic in a month or two for dog spaying surgery. The reason for this is that the extra dog spaying surgery does add greatly to the caesarean section anaesthetic time, which might be risky in an animal whose health has already been somewhat compromised by placental blood loss and by a period spent trying to give birth prior to the C-section being started. The longer surgery will also increase the dog's post-operative recovery time and may potentially affect her ability to mother her puppies. Additionally, performing a dog spaying procedure on an opened uterus does increase the risk of fetal fluids and uterine contents entering the animal's abdominal cavity, which could increase the risk of the animal developing peritonitis.