ABSTRACT
In March 2005 my nineteen-month-old son, Joe, the eldest of twin boys, died suddenly and unexpectedly during the night. This was not, as many have later come to term it, a “cot death” but rather the result of some chronic and undiagnosed problems that stemmed from his premature birth nearly nineteen months earlier, when he had suffered from a collapsed lung and was variously suspected of brain damage, hearing loss, and digestive disasters. Despite these tentative diagnoses and the exigencies of both his birth and early weeks in the world, Joe remained apparently unaffected by any long-term difficulties. Just six weeks after his untimely entry into the world, both he and his twin brother, Dan, were allowed home to join their four-year-old sister, Amy, who had recently started school.
