When I started this book I was fascinated to the extreme. The treatment of premie babies, the challenges and decisions and precision of needle-sharp skills required to keep them alive and growing outside the safe womb--it was impossible to put down. The historical passages were illuminating; the descriptions of the medical procedures fascinating; the progress of development of a baby's independent life systems, from lungs to temperature regulation to the all critical phases of brain development and specialization...wow. I was ready to buy a copy and loan to my friends.
But at three-quarters through, the story skipped. The story of the one infant, not just "infants" in the abstract but the author's own little girl--the story that ribboned through the textbook and made all the plain facts come alive--it broke up into sound bites. I mean...he talked about holding her and finally, after so long, feeding her that first bottle, but it didn't mean anything to me. Was it just me?
It was me, a little. I wanted more details at a time when they didn't have more details to give me. The baby Larissa's growth after she went home from the hospital wasn't so meticulously measured and weighed against advances in medicine. The section on breast milk, for example, wasn't woven into the story but sort of tacked on near the end.
So to sum up, good book--very good. Left me wanting more.
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