Anji, so glad you brought that up, very often someone has a completely unexpected litter of babies, and mostly they are fine??

The first time I experienced birthing, it was Xena, and no one knew she was gravid until that morning I woke up to a whole bunch of baby snakes.

There is a lot of possible reasons, over handling may well be one of them.

Since snakes are all individuals, they each handle stress in a different way.