Small Victories |

I remember like it was yesterday what I was doing 28 years ago this week. In a matter of days I went from looking forward to the birth of my baby – in theory, still many weeks away – to watching him rushed to intensive care.

I was fortunate that our son spent just five weeks in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) before he was well enough to go home. The care of premature infants has improved since our experience, but many of these fragile newborns still face complex medical problems; the nurses and doctors who care for them are amazing people who support anxious paren'ts through the inevitable setbacks and celebrate with them the small victories in their babies' first weeks.

My memories were triggered by a remarkable new book I came across in the Science & Technology Department here at the North York Central Library. Adam Wolfberg is a physician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies. He also writes and blogs on health topics. He is the father of a child who was born 14 weeks prematurely, and his first book, Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU, is both the story of his family's experience with a critically ill premature child and an examination of the difficult medical, ethical and legal issues faced by the paren'ts and physicians of these infants. According to Publishers Weekly, "… the stories of extremely premature infants-the 2% born before 32 weeks of gestation-could have no better narrator than Wolfberg, a Tufts Medical Center obstetrician. Wolfberg's own daughter, Larissa, was born three months prematurely, and is the focus of this astounding history of the advances in neonatal medical care, and understanding the brain's ability to adapt to injury."