Sad gerbil news... (Updated)

[AprilD32]

Friday morning our momma gerbil went into labor. By Friday afternoon she had given birth to 5 baby gerbils. One was stillborn.  All afternoon and evening one of the remaining 4 kept ending up out of the nest away from the others. I wasn't sure if the mom was pushing it out on purpose or not but I kept putting it back with the others and it kept getting kicked out of the nest again.  This morning the one baby was dead.  The other 3 seemed fine when we left this morning to go to a fishing derby. But when we got home 2 more were dead with no explanation.  This evening I checked on the last living baby gerbil, the mom was laying on it. I moved the mom to check on it and it was dead too.  The mom seems lathargic this evening herself. I don't know what went wrong with this litter, I hope the mom is just depressed and will be okay soon but since I don't know what went wrong I am worried about the mom too.  :(

Maybe she will be fine and in a while there will be a 2nd chance litter. Maybe it was just because it was her first litter?

 

The momma gerbil is fine. She seems to be a little depressed but she is healthy and eating and drinking. I think she will be fine.  I am afraid she may have freaked out and negleted the babies because I changed the bedding in the cage right after the babies were born. I would not have done that except that the cage was soaked because the water bottle leaked all over the cage. The water bottle was fine but then was empty and the water was all over the bedding. I thought wet bedding would be really bad for the babies so I cleaned it out and replaced it and put a different water bottle on the cage. In reading online about baby gerbils sometimes the moms can get a little neurotic about the cage and nest when the babies are born and if things are not left alone she might freak out and forget to nurse the babies.  So it might be my fault the babies didn't make it.