Early An Intimate History of Premature Birth and What It Teaches Us About Being Human

Sarah DiGregorio

eBook - 2020

A journalist uses her own dramatic experience giving birth to explore the history of neonatology and the questions raised by premature birth. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is a place made of stories—where humanity, ethics, and science collide in dramatic and deeply personal ways, as parents, physicians, and nurses grapple with sometimes unanswerable questions raised by premature birth. When does life begin? When and how should life end? And what does it mean to be human? For the first time, journalist Sarah DiGregorio explores the fascinating evolution of neonatology and its significant breakthroughs—modern medicine can now save infants at five and a half months gestation who weigh less than a pound, when only fifty years ago ...there were few effective treatments for premature babies. Weaving her own story and those of other parents and NICU clinicians with in-depth reporting, DiGregorio examines the history and future of one of the most boundary-pushing... more