More Than Storks

"Birth Day" explores how babies are born.

Birth Day

By Mark Sloan. 370 pp. $25

You might expect a book about childbirth to be written by an obstetrician. But the author of "Birth Day," an exploration of the science and history of childbirth and early infancy, is a pediatrician. His decision to "throw in my lot with the babies" translates into a book focused more on the results of childbirth than on the act itself. Sloan, who practices in Northern California, is a graceful writer, and his narrative, like the works of Jerome Groopman, flows easily between memoir, anecdotal reporting and hard science.

In a chapter on the first five minutes of life, for example, he contrasts the stories of two babies -- one born vaginally but with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, the other in a more complicated emergency cesarean -- to illustrate how a newborn makes the precarious transition to breathing on its own.

Given the subject, "Birth Day" has a natural audience in curious, new and expectant parents. But anyone interested in the complex and, yes, miraculous way we all make it into this world will find lots to wonder over and ponder here, too.

-- Nora Krug