You will have to indulge me in yet another story before I get into all of this in more detail.  In 1991, I had been working for the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at the Medical College of Wisconsin for about 13 months.   Fortunately BMT has made incredible strides and is a very viable and successful treatment for many cancers and bone/blood diseases.  But back then most of it was very experimental and many of the patients died probably sooner and in more discomfort than had the disease taken its course.  But these were the brave folks that made today's successes possible.  I was not providing patient care, only working with the data but since lots of data was collected daily it was almost like working with the patient.  I got burnt out and decided I wanted to get back into healthcare operations/administration.

I found that opportunity with a company called Healthdyne.   This was a national home health care agency that completely specialized in the care of high risk obstetric patients.  The company had devloped several "home" versions of monitoring equuipment similar to those used in hospitals for monitoring uterine activity and fetal well being.  By providing this equipment, women could monitor in their homes, transmit data via a phone line to a nurse who would interpret the data and provide intervention (via the physician) when needed.   Traditionally women who had high risk pregnancies would have had to have been hospitalized for months.  Or women did not actually realize they were in labor until it was too late and would have very premature babies.   By early identification of preterm labor, drugs could be used to stop contractions and prolong gestation.  And of course many mothers preferred being in their own homes rather than the hospital.  I was administrative manager for the Wisconsin and Illinois regions and enjoyed the work immensely.  In fact, I used data I gather from local hospitals to do a cost benefit analysis that was the basis for my master's thesis.

But in 1996, Healthdyne went through a merger with its only competitor and there were major changes made.  The Wisconsin based office was closed completely.  I was offered the opportunity to relocate but was not interested at the time.  So off I went to hospital administration and because there was no local presence did not stay up on that business.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago when I had an email conversation with Denise Flaim, a breeder on the east coast.  She had just had a large litter and I asked about how it all went.  She credited a very nice whelp to a company called Whelpwise.  She had written an article about it and sent it to me.  Included in the article were a few small photos of the equipment.  I almost fell off my chair.  I had to enlarge on of the photos about 15x but when I did, I knew I was looking at the same equipment we had used with Healthdyne.  In fact it was the Healthdyne logo on the equipment I was seeing in the photo enlargement!  From Denise's article and some other research I did, I found out that one of the former Healthdyne Nurse Managers in the Denver area was also a dog breeder.  She developed the idea and partnered with some veterinarians specializing in canine reproduction and started Whelpwise/Veterinary Perinatal Specialities.

The equipment is provided on a rental basis and you have them at your disposal for assistance 24 hours a day for a 7-10 days before and through the whelp.   They provide essential two types of monitors.  The first is the uterine contraction monitor.  This device is looking for uterine activity in the bitch.  A sensor is attached to her abdomen while she rests it records any activity.  See the picture with this post.    Even 7 days before whelp it is not unusually to see a couple of contractions.  Emma did not show any on her first "strip" this morning.  But this baseline info will help look at any patterns as we get closer to the due date.  It will help us also determine when she is truly in labor when the time comes.

The second piece of equipment is a doppler which is a ultrasonic reader designed to find and assess fetal heart rates.  You can use it to determine how many puppies are actually in there.  Once labor starts you can monitor fetal heart rates in the case of a delay in delivery and you can make sure there have all arrived by listening for any remaining tones.  Since I am having the x-ray tomorrow, we are going to try to do the doppler tonight to see if we can figure out and get the number of puppies right.

If you are interested in more info go to www.whelpwise.com.

Of  course more to come tomorrow.