AUDIOBOOK
About
I delivered twenty babies in the summer of 1977. I was hardly more than a baby myself, just turned twenty-four and starting my third year of medical school. So began Mark Sloan's three-decades-long exploration of the wonders and oddities of human childbirth. Pediatrician, husband, and father, the author has attended nearly three thousand births since that long-ago summer, encountering everything from routine deliveries to tense labor-room dramas. In Birth Day, Sloan draws on his personal and professional experience to weave the strands of memoir, history, science, and culture into a fascinating-and often funny-tapestry of this fundamental human passage. Some of Birth Day's many topics include: • The first five minutes of life-scuba divers, astronauts, and the amazing adaptations that transform a fetus into an air-breathing, out-in-the-world baby. • Cesarean section-a look at its origins, its future, and how it came to be the most frequently performed operation in American hospitals. • The five senses at birth-does light enter the womb? How loud is it in there? What is a newborn baby searching for with those first anxious glances? Mark Sloan, M.D., has been a pediatrician and a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics for more than twenty-five years. He is one of the highest-rated pediatricians (by patients and peers) in Kaiser Permanente's Northern California region. His writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. He lives in Santa Rosa, California, with his wife and two teenage children, who continue to provide him with a wealth of practical pediatric experience.