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scrutiny?
    May 3, 1999: Matilda Grace comes into the world at 7:25 p.m. Pregnancy and birth normal, although later you’ll wonder whether that’s true. You’ll struggle to remember details that seemed inconsequential at the time:
Did you drink tap water? Did you eat any fish that might have contained high levels of mercury?
Having a baby is something that never changes, has never changed in the history of the world, and also something that changes all the time. The adviceyou got from doctors and baby-care manuals was cutting-edge and up-to-date; it was also completely different from the advice Josh’s older sister had gotten five years earlier and the advice younger friends were given five years later.
    You know that when you were a baby, you were put to sleep on your tummy, like most babies of your generation. It was thought to be safer, to prevent choking if you spit up while you were unattended. Your nephew, born in 1995, was placed to sleep on his side, an ungainly position for an infant and one that required a foam crib insert, to keep him from toppling one way or the other. By the time Tilly was born, it was imperative that you lay her down on her back. No pillows or blankets, though swaddling was encouraged; no soft toys that have button eyes or pom-pom noses. And you suppose it worked; neither of your babies died from SIDS. But who knows what they’ll be told, Tilly and Iris, when it’s their turn to bend over a cradle and place a wriggling baby down to sleep. (
Did you color your hair while you were pregnant? Did you take any over-the-counter medications?
)
    By the time you were ready to get rid of the crib that held each of your babies safely for two years apiece, the mechanism that moved the side up and down had already been rejected as too dangerous. You couldn’t get any charity to take it, or any pregnant friend; you were advised to break it into pieces before putting it out for bulk trash collection, so that it couldn’t be appropriated by a passerby and used for some new baby who might not survive its outdated design. (
How well did you wash your fruits and vegetables? How much coffee did you drink?
)
    If you look at the long history of women having babies, there is no right or wrong; there is no universal truth. You think about women in the nineteenth century, told that if they should happen to gaze upon anything gruesome or horrifying, their babies would be born deformed. Of course, that’s ridiculous—right? (
Did you eat soft cheeses or sushi?Do you have lead fillings in your teeth?
) Now, with more than a century of extra wisdom and confusion under your belt, you’re not so sure anything can be ruled out. A crisis of faith doesn’t have to be about God. You can have a crisis of faith about dust mites and food additives that cause behavioral changes. Pesticides in fruit salad and insect husks in peanut butter. Mysterious rashes caused by something you brought home in a suitcase.
    There’s a startling fact that you read somewhere: after airbags became standard in cars, statisticians noticed that the incidence of severe leg injuries increased dramatically. Think about it for a minute: Why should that be? Is there something about the way airbags inflate during collision that targets the passengers’ legs, makes them more vulnerable?
    No. It’s a matter of checks and balances. Before airbags, there were certain accidents that would have killed you; you’d be a corpse in the morgue, and no one would be paying any attention to your legs. When we change the way we do things—the way we shop for groceries or take care of our children or protect ourselves from harm—we set other changes in motion, for good or for ill. And it may be years before we figure out what we’ve done.
    You cried in the parking lot of the doctor’s office, after that last meeting with the developmental pediatrician, the one where she broke her news so gently and