[Sara1130]

Sorry to hear about momma and what she is going through. I went through my own nightmare after the girl I now have, Bella had problems after her c-section. She was unable to nurse for the first 7 days if memory serves me correctly and I had to bottle feed my 4 babies.

From my experience the puppy needs 1 ml/cc per oz of weight every 2 hours. Not sure if that is still correct with using the goats milk formula. So a 4 oz puppy would need at least 4 ml/cc at each feeding.

The little bottles that you buy at the store are ok for the first few feedings but they will quickly out grow them. I think I ended up getting 8 of them since I had to keep readjusting the flow of the milk. I did start with a syringe and I would drop 1 drop at a time in their mouth and that was using the little syringe when they could not suck. I also had to use a small eye dropper and do the same with that. After the first week we had to move to a bigger nipple so I got a gerber baby bottle from the infant section and it had a preemie nipple on it that was just the right size for them. I am now using a Dr. Brown's bottle with a newborn nipple on it and it works perfectly.

Burp them all after each feeding....they can get colic and will cry. If they are still crying after you have feed them, try burping or diapering them again, if that does not work you may try giving them some more food.....but only a small amount. If their tummy is already full then I would not offer food but if it is still smushy then I would. Also you will need to diaper them too after each feeding. If milk comes out their nose then stop feeding, clean out the milk and I did that by wiping it off first and then turning them upside down and patting on their back. You don't want them to inhale the milk. You may have some that don't want to eat and you just have to keep working with them to get them too. If they were all sucking on mom it won't take them long to get used to the bottle. Just try different size nipples till you find one that works for them. It was a lot of trial and error process but I have 4 healthy puppies that are now 4 weeks old. If you have a scale there you can weigh them before and after and do monitor their daily weight to make sure they are gaining. We lost a lot of weight the first few days but then it stopped and now on a steady climb.

Hope some of this helps. Ask any questions that you have or that you are unsure of....the more info you have the better you will be able to help them.