“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?
I have been a pediatrician for almost 30 years, during which time I have had to convince people that I am neither a) Dick Van Dyke, who played Dr. Mark Sloan on Diagnosis Murder in the 1990s, nor b) Eric Dane, who currently plays a sleazy plastic surgeon version of Dr. Mark Sloan on Grey's Anatomy. I don't know what it is about my name and TV doctors...
I live in Santa Rosa, California, about an hour north of San Francisco, among the redwoods, cows and vineyards. Elisabeth and I have been married for 24 years, and we have two teengers, who continue to provide me with a wealth of hands-on pediatric experience...
My writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune (including an essay about lessons I learned while falling out of moving cars as a kid), the San Francisco Chronicle, and Notre Dame Magazine, among other publications. "Birth Day: A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History and the Wonder of Childbirth" is my first book.
Birth Day is partly a memoir of my professional career and my experiences as a dad, and partly an exploration of the fascinating story of how humans came to give birth the way we do. There's a lot of humor in it as well.
Birth Day has gotten a large number of great reviews - from The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly (a starred review), The New England Journal of Medicine, and Fit Pregnancy Magazine (5 stars), among many others. I'm getting very nice reader responses as well, which I love to receive. It's great to hear from readers!
I hope you enjoy Birth Day!
Mark Sloan MD
My author website and contact info:
marksloanmd.com
