Apologies

| Patricia Bujard

I am sorry for the lateness of this post, and I am sorry to say that the final critters and any responses to comments will have to wait for a few days at least.

It can get a bit difficult to hold a pencil to draw when Baby is in constant need of attention. He had long naps for the first few days, but life can get rough when you’re nine days old and all the discomforts of hunger, tummy bubbles, and a healing belly button hit you like a ton of bricks.

Poor little guy went from a life of pure bliss to a world full of bright light, loud sounds, and all sorts of discomforts he has to get used to.

We’re all feeling like the mother Allosaurus in the video below lol.

Fun fact: Did you know that dinosaurs had belly buttons?

It’s true!

In mammals, the baby is fed through a special tube called an umbilical cord, which connects Baby to the placenta. This feeds Baby and provides them with oxygen as they grow. Once they are born, the cord is cut after a while, and the little stump that’s still attached to Baby dries out and falls off after about a week.

Normally this is a relatively painless process. The cord itself can’t feel anything, and the stump just scabs over and falls off. The resulting scar is what we call a bellybutton.

Animals that lay eggs are not attached to their mothers for nourishment of course, but they do have the yolk inside the egg that has the same purpose. The tiny critter also has something like an umbilical cord that connects them to the yolk, called a yolk stalk.

Just like in human babies, this cord normally dries up and falls off in a few days (faster for smaller animals). Of course, sometimes things aren’t as simple as they should be…

Which leads to late and/or delayed posts.

But I don’t want to leave y’all hanging, so here is a little preview of the critters I’ve been working on…Can you guess what they are? Please keep in mind that these are rough and unfinished. I had to stop in the middle of sketching the bottom one.

I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!