Fetch Babyface: A Story Of Heart And Bones Composed By Jeanne McDermott Accessible In Publication

is a tender account of a mother's experience raising a child with Apert syndrome, a genetic disorder characterized by skeletal skull, hands, feet abnormalities.



"For human beings who rely on vision forpercent of the information about the world out there, nothing is richer, nothing exerts more power and fascination than a face.
Some believe that an infant's first experiences with the proportion and symmetry of the face, the baby's perception of a coherent unity from its individual parts, build the aesthetic foundation for what the adult will consider beautiful.
From static yet everchanging features, the face conveys identity, intention, and emotion, Studies show that in the first five seconds of meeting a person, we make a decision about his character and moral nature based on how we see his face.
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"But millions of years of evolution prepared the brain to discriminate, to distinguish between self and other, friend and foe, kin and outsider.
The eyes focus irresistibly on the face because it is a powerful circle of meaning, where lifeanddeath clues to identity and intention converge, Neurologists have discovered that this information is so essential to survival that there is a cluster of brain cells, dedicated to deciphering, remembering, and reading the face.
In the absurdly short space of a lifetime, how could I reprogram all of that"

", . . reading was my narcotic and salvation, . . "

"He did look more 'normal' but I laughed at that observation, knowing that 'normal' is whatever you see or do on a regular basis.
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"Bonnie shifted focus to his speech, puzzling that everything came out 'Baa' and enlisted Martha, the speech therapist, who observed that the shape and structure of his airway made it tricky to coordinate the breathing and tongue movements necessary for each phonetic building block.
So did his low muscle tone, Since Nathaniel was a communicative and animated baby who differentiated his intentionsyou could feel the meaning in his pointer finger even connected to his mittenbut not the actual sounds he made, Bonnie and Martha suggested signing.
That way, they reasoned, his grasp of language, communication, and social development would not be hampered by articulation troubles, Each week, they taught my fingers baby talk that I went home and taught to Ted and Jeremy, It was a brilliant solution that worked: a child whose fingers would never bendeven when they were out of the fulllength arm casts needed to protect the skin grafts on his new fingerswas learning a language of manual dexterity.
But if trees and fish spoke with chemicals then surely every hand can dance, "

"Nathaniel's walking marked the distances that our species had traveled in a million years, The intensive parental care required by all babies in the first year of life was a legacy from the past when our hominid ancestors stopped loping across African savannahs on their knuckles and stood on two feet.
The biomechanics of upright posture constrained the size of the pelvic opening, which meant that the earliest Homo sapiens babies were born before they were fully developed, when their heads were still small and plastic enough to pass through a narrow birth canal.
Human babies really have a gestation period of twentyone monthsnine months in utero and the first twelve months outside their mother's body, "

"I sat quietly and balanced my love of science with faith in the mysteries that reason will never penetrate, knowing with bittersweet clarity that just as the body intermingles with the soul, so do the things that can be explained merge with those that cannot.
" This book is about my boyfriend, written by his mother, If I did not love him when I read it, I certainly did after! Science writer's account of the first two years of her son's life with Apert syndrome.
Well done, but got a bit slow in the second half, Love, Love, Love this book Nonfiction, Jeanne lives in Cambridge, MA, Her son Nathaniel has Aperts syndrome the brain plates are fused, Great story about a Mother, who happens to be a science writer, detailing the first two years of her son's life with Apert Syndrome, It brings up a lot of issues about the importance of looks and the harsh reality of prejudice, This is an interesting story that nearly everyone can relate to because it is about human nature and the bond of a family, I had to read this book for a class, I respect the author and the journey she went through, however the writing in this memoir is terrible, The writing style is so flowery, but in a way that makes it corny, like the author thought too hard about trying to be creative.
At times, I got so lost in the language that I couldnt determine the point of a particular passage in the context of the larger story.


Overall, and in my opinion, the writing style of this memoir really takes away from any impact the authors experience may potentially have on readers.
Although my son doesn't have Apert's syndrome, he was born extremely prematurely and was very sick, . . so I could relate to this memoir on a number of levels, Read my review here: sitelink blogspot. com/ Everyone wants their baby's born withlittle toes andlittle fingers, but what if your son or daughter was born with a horrible disease for which there might not be a cure Jeanne McDermott gave birth to a baby born with Apert Syndrome.
This baby's fingers and toes are webbed and he has a craniofacial abnormality, Read Babyface: A Story of Heart and Bones, to find out how McDermott and her husband dealt with their son's disease, McDermott was able to combine fact and feeling to create a memoir of her and her husband's life journey that involved many doctor appointments and surgical operations.
This book definitely belongs to a particular genre, the "mommy coming to terms with disability of a child for the first time memoir, It is not unlike expecting Adam, except instead of Downs Syndrome her child has a much more rare craniofacial disease, Apert Syndrome, I had never heard of Apert syndrome before reading this book, Because the author was a science writer by profession her discription of the disease and her child's treatments is incredibly detailed, Many children with Apert syndrome develop average cognitive abilities in the average sequence,although often a tad delayed due to physical limitations in infancy, It is interesting to consider how this feature may color one's interactions with health professionals when compared to say Downs Syndrome,

The author is far less critical of the medical establishment than is typical of this genre, If anything distinguishes this book, it is the fact that it does not alienate medical or special education

professionals as much as most parental disability rights memoirs.
This is really incredible when considering how much time these parents spent in the hospital while their child had multiple back to back surgeries in the first few years of life! This mommy seems to totally get it when it comes to medical culture, she sees the people behind their professional roles.
A memoir that offers an intimate look at how her ideas of perfection and wholeness were turned upside down, It explores her circumstances on many levels: Her own and her family's emotional survival genetic and ethical questions regarding disability beliefs about beauty and what it means to be human.
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