Got home, had to catch Gardenia and put her in a container for five minutes so that I could count her babies and fix her nest.
She'd become so determined to fortify the nest that she'd pulled more litter and all her lab blocks into it, along with some bits of the pan liner and all the paper. I needed to check that the babies weren't gettting smothered under all the stuff.
Silly worrywart me! The babies -- all 8, yes, 8 -- of them were just fine. She had them tucked safely in a corner.
But the nest was getting a bit gross, so I'm glad I got rid of all the crud. I gave her a lot of clean paper and she started rebuilding the inside.
So I got the chance to confirm that the number of babies was 8, not 7. Three are dark, probably black Berks, and five are very light. I gave each one a kiss and took guesses about their gender. I think it was about half boys, half girls.