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Book Summary
Babies are unique little bundles of joy. Their sudden rashes, uncoordinated movements, and Technicolor poop are vastly different from adults and sometimes quite alarming. While pediatricians, the experts on these little ones, understand these differences, they may prove deeply unsettling to adults. Unfortunately, worried parents often find themselves lost in the trackless depths of the Internet, or confused by the standard “how-to” baby books that offer few, if any, satisfying explanations.
Pediatrician Wendy L. Hunter, M.D. and science writer Dennis Meredith have written the first “why-to” book about babies. Mysterious Baby is an engaging exploration into what pediatricians and scientists are learning about these fascinating creatures. With their combined expertise in pediatrics and science communication, the authors explore such intriguing questions as:
- How do babies experience pain?
- Why are babies so uncoordinated?
- What’s so profoundly different about babies’ senses?
- Why do babies’ brains “shrink” as they learn about the world?
- Why is it dangerous to give young babies water?
Mysterious Baby connects real-world clinical experience to the latest scientific research on infants and translates it into practical information. This invaluable guidance gives parents and caregivers the facts they need to understand why babies do the things they do and how to interact with babies in a more meaningful and gratifying way.
In working as an emergency room pediatrician, Dr. Hunter often sees the worry, and even fear, in parents’ eyes when they bring their babies into the ED with strange and frightening “symptoms.” Fortunately, many of these symptoms, such as widespread rashes, gasping for breath, and even high fevers can be perfectly normal for a baby. But like Dr. Hunter’s fellow pediatricians, she has too little time with parents to give them the detailed explanation of why these symptoms are normal.
In Mysterious Baby, Dr. Hunter takes the reader along on her adventures in the pediatric emergency room, by telling tales of pediatricians’ sometimes harrowing, sometimes funny, experiences with their tiny patients and their parents. For example, when:
- A newborn was rushed to the ED because the skin around his lips turned blue every time he fed. Fearing their baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen; the parents were relieved to learn that the veins around his lips were simply being engorged with blood, because his newborn nervous system didn’t quite know when to constrict his blood vessels. Quite common. That’s just one of the many strange, but normal “symptoms” babies have that are caused by nervous system immaturity.
- A pediatrician urgently sent a baby boy to the ED, suspecting an infectious abscess on the chest that would need immediate surgery. But the warm lump was actually benign breast enlargement, and the baby was producing breast milk because he was exposed to mom’s hormones through her breast milk. Not a problem. Babies have a variety of symptoms that result from exposure to maternal hormones, and this is only one example of the intimate connection to the mother that lasts long after the cord is cut.
- The panicked grandmother brought her granddaughter in because the baby had briefly stopped breathing. Intermittent breathing is perfectly normal in young infants because the carbon dioxide sensors in their brain respond differently than in adults. The chemical processes, organ function and molecular machinery of a baby are completely unlike the adult and manifest as common behaviors that babies display every day.
Besides enlightening parents and offering insightful explorations into “baby science,” Mysterious Baby also aims to remedy the widespread misconceptions about babies that compromise their medical treatment and health. Even many health care professionals wrongly believe that infants have the same physiology as adults, show the same symptoms of medical problems, and can be given the same medical treatment. Shattering this dangerous myth will enable not only better clinical care for babies, but enhanced research into more effective future treatments and improved public health policies.
Mysterious Baby will be the first book in “The Fascinating Science of Childhood” series that will include Mysterious Toddler, Mysterious Child, and Mysterious Teen (or alternately, Curious Toddler, Playful Child, Transitioning Teen). The series will highlight the latest research about each age group, as well as cover what pediatricians know from their clinical experience. The books will explain how this knowledge can help us all to understand and enjoy children at different ages, and have a deeper understanding and appreciation of how we have been shaped through our own development.
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