A Day of firsts and Miracle births

Somedays I am so amazed and in awe of the work I get to do. I wanted to share it all with you.

Two days ago, miraculously, I participated in something that was most likely a world first: the successful c-section of a three-toed sloth baby. I want to share this story for others—here it is from my point of view:

A week ago we received an adult female three toed sloth at the wildlife rescue clinic. The sloth was brought by a young man who worked for a local hotel. He witnessed her fall from a tree. After trying to help her get back up and climb to her safety, he realized something more was wrong and called us for help. At first sight this sloth captivated my heart…she was having a seizure, but I swear we made eye contact and instantly I was hooked. At the time this was the first sloth seizure I had ever seen and true to sloth nature, it was a ‘slow’ seizure. It was more like a neurotic tick than a typical seizure seen in human and non-human primates. Upon examination I determined that she had not fractured her skull (yay!) and that she was pregnant (not so yay). After speaking with our vet, I started her medications and of course supportive care. Now it became a waiting game. A few days later she wasn’t looking much better. Her eyes were bright and her lungs sounded good, she just wasn’t moving much and still had some rigidity to her limbs. Her prognosis was not good and euthanasia was even discussed. I’ve seen a lot of animals pass away during the two years that I’ve worked in wildlife rescue here in Costa Rica and after each death I often think, “how can I keep doing this? It’s too hard” but somehow I find the will to keep fighting. That day, I wanted to keep fighting for this mom and her unborn baby, my gut told me not to give up. Two days later mom started to show signs of labor. I’ve never seen a sloth have contractions, but these ‘painful moments’ where her entire body seemed to be cramping and her arms reached out for anything to squeeze…really seemed like contractions to me! So I started documenting when they started and when they ended. But I couldn’t help but wonder if she could successfully have the baby with her prior injuries? Was a difficult pregnancy why she fell in the first place? The contractions were all over the place. There was no real pattern. After 24 hours of documenting her pain, she had an hour-long contraction, that was so intense, multiple times I thought at any moment her vagina would start to open and a head would crown. However, the contraction ended and still no baby. It became obvious to me that more diagnostics were needed in order to determine how best we could help this momma.

Luckily, Volunteer, Sloth lover and friend; Seda Sejud serendipitously showed up to visit our newly built “Sloth Bootcamp”. But when I saw her I immediately asked, “Would you be able to take me and this Momma sloth to a vet about an hour from here? I think she is in labor and needs help.” Seda responded with a quick “yes” and off we went!

We arrived at Veterinarian Yesse Alpizar, in Herradura. I’ve taken other patients to Yesse before. She is one of the kindest and smartest vets I’ve met and she also happens to have a clinic equipped with a digital X-ray and ultrasound machine. After getting a complete history on momma sloth, Yesse examined her and agreed with me that she was in labor. We first took an X-ray. It was amazing to see the little life inside of mom’s belly…but unfortunately the baby was in a breech position and mom was completely full of urine and feces (sloths can hold up to 30% of their body weight in urine/feces) meaning that the baby changing position wasn’t likely. At this point, c-section was discussed but we needed to check the baby with an ultrasound to confirm a heartbeat and the exact position. With the first swipe of the ultrasound probe, we didn’t see a heartbeat. My heart sank. Just one day before I had felt the baby move inside of mom’s belly. So I knew that recently it was alive and I could only hope that it still was. Yesse kept swiping the probe around mom’s belly searching and searching for a tiny flicker of the heart. Was the baby still alive?!?

Luckily, I brought my camera…