I hope the snake is ok! 
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Here’s to hoping nature is on your side!!! 
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Nature seems to grace me twice! After a bath and some gentle massaging, I got out what looked to be a small piece of stuck shed that had gathered in the cloaca that was likely from first shed, a lot of the fluid buildup is now gone overnight! There’s still some noticeable swelling, but it’s less than half of what it was yesterday. I have no idea how I missed it except maybe it’s because I handle him infinitely less than I do even the other babies since he’s a bit of a runt, but the poor little guy’s rear end if you held it up to the light you could see straight through him from the fluid buildup. He seemed much more reactive today too, which was also a prior concern that I was monitoring, I bet he feels a LOT better now
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Never heard of anything like that. That’s crazy! So glad the situation seems remedied! 
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On a related note, I ALWAYS scour the shed skin looking for the shed eyecaps, since it can be hard to identify retained eyecaps.
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Hooray for GREAT NEWS! 
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Update on this little guy, he’s a very discombobulated fellow compared to the other babies, so I think I’ll name him ‘Flip’. He also just took another milliliter of carnivore care for me, it’s a blessing and a curse that he doesn’t fight me much when I try to give him some. So far I’ve been doing 1 milliliter for Flip and 2 milliliters for his bigger sibling every week since I don’t want to stress them out, since it’s such a small amount of actual nutrients, I was wondering if I should bump them up to getting it twice a week. I’d like my babies to thrive rather than just survive, which I feel like they’re erring more towards the latter (except the stripe girl of course, she’s been wonderful lol, my only complaint is that I have to actually watch her eat and stimulate her food or she’ll spit it back up)
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Here’s a small picture of him pre-being fed. You can see some dehydration lines now that he isn’t swollen which is a concern, but he refuses fresh water when offered. I’ve been changing out his water twice a day now to try and encourage a bit of drinking. Bottom line he’ll get his hydration back up via some more liquid-y than usual carnivore care
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I try to do critical care syringings every 5 days. Pain in the butt.
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thank you! I’ll start a five day rotation for them and watch their weights, so far they’ve each only put on a gram that they’ve kept since I just started with the critical care. I’ve got the mixture to about 2 parts powder to one part water which seems to get a good consistency for me, if that sounds similar to what you do.
The little ultra masque will absolutely fight me to the point I need assistance, but then again I need assistance with most baby snake things with as shaky as my hands are, I’m near terrified I’ll choke the poor things if my hand jerks too hard, meds can only do so much to help in my case
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Chicken goop thickness can depend a lot on the size of the tube. I don’t measure precisely. I’d say that when I had a narrower tube, I was mixing it to the consistency of chocolate milk, and with this new tube I’m mixing it to eggnog thickness. Very scientific. 
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Unfortunate news, Flip has passed, he seemed to have some sudden severe bruising and swelling when I checked on him that he didn’t have this morning. This makes me worry the most recent feeding went wrong or something, I likely won’t get a necropsy, but I can’t help but wonder what went wrong, or more accurately, what I did wrong
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I’m sorry to hear it. That pinched, dehydrated look he had some days ago was not a good sign. I think you can chalk it up to failure to thrive.
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Likely, I have no idea what I did wrong with the dehydration, I’d changed his water, gave him frequent steam baths, etc. etc., he was a runt on top of everything which I’m assuming didn’t help him. At least the other two seem to be doing well for me
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I’m so sorry for your loss. I have to ask, what do you mean by steam baths? Realistically it was likely a combination of things, however the symptoms sound like sepsis/organ failure.
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Taking slightly warm water that’s incredibly shallow and placing the snake inside a ventilated Tupperware. As long as it’s lukewarm and shallow enough that the baby can still touch the bottom of the tote. It seems to freak them out less than a full-on bath and offers them both some condensation to drink and some very shallow water at the ground to drink. I’ve gotten dehydrated baby ball pythons to regain some hydration this way so I thought I’d try it once or twice with this little guy to see if it’d help, it seems it didn’t. I leave them in for fifteen monitored minutes tops.
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I use a very similar method for my stubborn shedders which are thankfully very few……however I set the container on a heat mat (very low heat!!!) so the water will not get cold and they can soak longer. I liken it to a little mini sauna if you will………
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Also one of my trick for bad shedders, lol. And some finicky eaters, believe it or not.
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Yes I have also tried this method with some that don’t want to eat, again very seldom, and it seems to hydrate/rehydrate, kinda like giving fluids to a human. This sometimes stirs an appetite in a finicky ball python.
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Okay, that’s kind of what I thought but the word steam threw me off a bit. As for feeding Flip, how much did he weigh, and were you feeding the 1ml in a single feed? Were you using a feeding tube, or just sticking a syringe tip in the mouth?
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