Heck egg binding or retention is just par for the course. I expect to have about a dozen or so each year. 99 percent of the time, benign neglect seems to work the best to resolving the problem.
To most females this happens to, they just got tuckered out before they could lay all of their eggs. Most do not get nearly enough exercise in their cages, so their muscle tone is obviously not optimum. So this is certainly the most work and use of their muscles that they will have all year long. Some just can't go the whole nine yards at one shot.
A couple of things are important here.
(1) Optimum laying conditions as early as possible will help the female to dump the eggs before they swell too much to be passed easily. Many people say a rule of thumb is that a female will lay her eggs 10 days after the pre-egg laying shed. I have found this is not true. If conditions are satisfactory to the female, she will lay in about 6 days after the shed. The 10 day benchmark is when the female becomes a whole lot less critical about where she lays them. Kind of an "any port in a storm" sort of attitude. The earlier she can dump the eggs, the easier it will be on her.
(2) If the female gets tired, heck don't make things worse by stressing her out by picking her up every 10 minutes to inspect her. Leave her alone! When she gets her strength back, she will continue on with the process. If you pick her up and otherwise stress her out, her natural instincts may tell her that this isn't such a good place to lay her eggs after all, so she will go into a search pattern again looking for a better place. All the while, those eggs are growing.
(3) When more than 2 weeks have passed after the initial egg laying commenced, you may have to step in and give a helping hand. Normally I let the female "tell" me when she wants help. In many cases, I will look in on her and see her with the tail raised and straining to pass the egg. In most cases, she does not even resist as I help to massage the egg out, giving her that little extra pressure needed to move the egg out. But you have to be gentle and reassuring to the female. If she thrashes and fights you, leave her alone! Don't add to the stress.
It is rare that I actually lose a snake to egg retention problems. In the early years doing this, I lost several of them per year, and my conclusion about why that happened then was that I worried the females to death and over stressed them. Having learned my lesson on that, I have found it is FAR better to just let nature try to take care of itself as much as possible before intruding. I know this is tough to do, but it is what I have found that works the best.
