NIX: So after we left the delivery room, we then made our way to the mom baby unit, and my parents had purchased an in-house photographer to take pictures. There was just this knowledge that there was something else about her that I didn't understand quite yet.ĬHAKRABARTI: And what was that something else? Because you write early in the book that other people noticed that there was something a little bit different about Anna, like the hospital photographer. I describe it in the book as a gong, kind of ringing inside of me, this alarm bell amidst the love and the intimacy of the moment. Was Anna like that aside from the silence?

And you kind of, like I said, intuitively know that all these little actions show that your baby's here. These are all moments of forming that maternal bond with your child. There was a palpable concern in the room, but nobody really said anything.ĬHAKRABARTI: You know, I'm thinking back to when my kiddos were born and that first moment where, you know, you're holding your brand-new baby and you're seeing how they're opening their eyes and even though they're still covered in goop, the smell of the baby and the little yawn they might do, or they might try to latch on. And so, 5 pounds was alarmingly small for a full-term baby. And I started asking, is she okay? Is she okay? And I don't really remember the midwife's response, but the doctor said she's okay, but she's only 5 pounds and she was full-term. Everybody sort of just looked at Anna, my daughter, for some signal that she was going to be okay. NIX: There was a palpable concern in the room, but nobody really said anything. What was the midwife's demeanor when your daughter was born? I understand how that is, that you just have this intuitive connection with your baby from the moment they're born. Though I felt that there was something really, really different about her and worrisome and mysterious at the same time.ĬHAKRABARTI: Yeah, you kind of knew from the start. And her silence is something that was much deeper than I realized at the time.

But her initial silence was a tone that was set for the rest of her life, really. And we looked at each other in this suspension of sound until the midwife placed her over my chest, where she breathed but still remained without any kind of scream or cry or anything, until an OB was called.Īnd she was brought to the corner, to the little baby warming table, and a couple providers huddled around her, jostled her with some towels, and finally she did let out a scream. I could tell that she was alive, but she didn't make any sound at all. And she had dark eyes and dark hair and just stared straight into me. And when the midwife held her up above my body, she was completely silent. And so the room was really dimly lit when I gave birth to her. Can you describe the moment of her birth? And Megan, in your book, Remedies for Sorrow, you write that something was really different with Anna from the moment she was born. But that's not what happened when Megan Nix gave birth to her daughter, Anna, in 2015. MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Usually when a baby first enters the world, there's that life affirming sound of the baby's cry and the joyous response from parents, family, medical caregivers in the room. Associate professor of maternal fetal medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Lynn Yee, medical director of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital Women’s Infectious Disease Program. Gail Demmler-Harrison, professor at Baylor College of Medicine and pediatric infectious disease physician at Texas Children’s Hospital.ĭr. Physician-in-chief at Komansky Children’s Hospital, New York Presbyterian. Sallie Permar, chair of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine. Megan Nix, author of “ Remedies for Sorrow: An Extraordinary Child, a Secret Kept from Pregnant Woman, and a Mother’s Pursuit of the Truth.” It’s a memoir about her experience with her daughter Anna, who has congenital CMV.ĭr. Today, On Point: A mother’s journey to understand her daughter’s diagnosis. One in every thousand babies born in the United States will have some symptom or long-term health problem due to congenital CMV.īut most doctors don't discuss it with expecting mothers during routine prenatal care. Megan Nix first learned about congenital CMV when her daughter was diagnosed in 2015. One virus causes more birth defects in American babies than any other nongenetic disease. (Photo By John Leyba/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

Nix is writing about how CMV is more prevalent than anyone knows, and how doctors are not warning pregnant mothers. Anna has CMV, a virus contracted in utero that caused her to be born deaf. WHEAT RIDGE, CO - OCTOBER 31: Megan Nix share a quiet moment with her daughter Anna Wiedel (16 months) at their home October 313, 2016 in Wheat Ridge.

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