Anyone *successfully* hand raised babies?

I know we get this question alot on this group, about someone who has found
orphaned mice or rodents and needs to "hand raise" them. My question is,
aside from finding a surrogate mouse mom, has anyone here known anyone to
successfully get newborns through the first week of life by hand?

I ask because I encountered a situation this week where I rescued a newborn
gerbil from a really bad situation in a pet store in the middle of nowhere
(ALL his littermates were dead), and managed to keep him alive for 2 days
with hourly feedings round the clock, heating pad, elimination by q-tip etc.
Everything recommended on all the sites. No sleep for 2 days. I had tried
this last year with 2 baby mice and they only made it about 36 hours, and
even this time, doing EVERYTHING as recommended, the little gerbil died at
40 hours.

I now understand why Flykiller always tells everyone to try everything they
can to find a MOUSE (or insert appropriate rodent) surrogate for the
newborns. For me one was not available, but I was just wondering if it's
ever been done by humans.

Meghan