Boy, time flies when you have a baby! On Wednesday, October 13th I gave birth to my son, Noah! The nine months that it took me to incubate this little guy seemed to fly by. So did the 31 hours of labor I endured before my doc decided a c-section would be in both our best interests --that's me and the baby, not me and the doc! Ever since Noah was born I've been thinking about all the baby birds I've raised over the last 16 years. It's amazing that a tiny little mourning dove takes a mere 11 days to be incubated, spends about 11 days in the nest and is tended to outside of the nest for maybe another seven days before it's on its own! My little Noah will take a wee bit longer before he "leaves the nest"!
Friends have been calling and emailing to see how we're doing. I don't hesitate to tell them that raising baby birds is easier! I love being a new mom and don't mind waking up every two to three hours to feed my son. I get a good laugh from the folks that find a baby bird and tell us they got up every few hours to feed it during the night until they could get it to us the next day! The first thing I usually tell them is that we're available 24/7 so don't hesitate to call anytime should they ever find another baby bird. Then I tell them that, unlike human babies, baby birds have a natural instinct to hunker down for the night when the sun sets! All of those "round the clock" feedings they endured weren't necessary! Think about it. Parent birds are up at the crack of dawn to forage and begin feeding their young. When the sun sets, they fly to the nest and sit on their babies until the next morning. You don't see them foraging at night, do you?! Granted when certain baby birds, such as mockingbirds, are just hatched these parent birds have it tough. Baby birds grow extremely quickly and when first hatched must be fed every 20 minutes! This tidbit of information is usually enough to encourage the rescuers to turn the babies over to us when they tell us they'd be happy to raise them!
My son was born just shy of five weeks ago. Being a first-time mom I didn't know what to expect, though I can certainly tell you that there are thousands of books out there that give you a pretty good idea what you're in for. This is good and not so good. The good is you won't be surprised when the advice is accurate, the not so good is that it is often true! For example, I spent nine months incubating Noah. I was anxious to see what he looked like when he arrived. I was lucky, he's cute as a button. I had read that newborns can't focus on anything short of ten inches from their face and their expression is often that of clueless. After spending nine months with this unborn baby you hope that it will immediately bond with you. The truth is that it looks like it might even speak a foreign language if it could even speak. By that I mean a newborn looks confused, like it landed on an alien planet! Noah didn't seem to recognize me...he simply opened his eyes, looked around and then promptly fell asleep, over and over again. Two weeks after he was born he at least began to focus a bit on my face! However, he still gives me that quizzical "Hmmm...you look familiar...do I know you?" look! I think I'm waiting for him to actually smile before I'll believe he recognizes me! With birds, it's different. You get that feeling of a connection soon after their eyes open, on day three or four, usually. You walk up to the man-made nest, granted with food in hand, and their little mouths pop open and they begin to chirp like they're really, really happy to see YOU!
And somehow, even though many baby birds are born naked, they seem to be pretty good at maintaining a constant body temperature. We use heat lamps and heating pads placed above the babies -- a trick I learned years ago from my mentor. She said it very simply one day...think about it, the mom's heat and the heat of the sun both come from above, not from below. My own son is a totally different story. I though by his being born in October I'd have it easy. The air temperatures this time of year would be nice, 60's and 70's, and the humidity would be dropping. The books (again, right on the money) educate you that human babies can't control their own body temperatures for at least the first ten days of their life. This was the easy part. You simply bundle them up in receiving blankets like burritos and they're perfectly content. But by week two things change. Our air temperatures this October briefly dropped, but then soared again (and by soaring I mean 70's at night and 80's during the day). Noah is like a little furnace! No matter what I do he seems to be sweaty all the time! Here I am with oodles of little long sleeved onsies with cute little footies and they're way too hot for him to wear. I quickly learned that he needs a lot less (I hope he doesn't outgrow the onsies before it actually cools down because I got some cute ones!). These days, in mid-November, Noah is usually outfitted in a short-sleeved onsie 24/7. When he's not in that he's, well, close to naked with just a diaper on! He seems to prefer it this way. Any excess clothing causes a heat rash and there's my adorable little baby covered in tiny red bumps! And that receiving blanket he was so contently bundled in...won't stay on anymore anyway. He's a master at wiggling his arms out even before I'm done wrapping him! That quick learning reminds me of how fledgling little baby birds start springing out of their man-made nests as soon as they discover their legs -- think day 10!
Again, my son Noah is only four and a half weeks old so this comparison between him and all the baby birds I've raised will surely continue so stay tuned!
