Girl in Glass: How My "Distressed Baby" Defied the Odds, Shamed a CEO, and Taught Me the Essence of Love, Heartbreak, and Miracles

By Deanna Fei

Deanna Fei was once simply five-and-a-half months pregnant while she inexplicably went into hard work. mins later, she met her tiny child who clung to lifestyles help within a pitcher field. Fei was once pressured to confront terrifying questions: easy methods to be the mum of a kid she may well lose at any second. even if her daughter may live on one other day--and no matter if she should still. yet as she watched her daughter struggle for her existence, Fei found the ability of the mother-child bond at its so much elemental.

A yr after she introduced her daughter domestic from the clinic, the CEO of AOL--her husband's employer--blamed the gorgeous, miraculously fit little woman for a lower in worker merits and hooked up a value tag to her lifestyles, utilizing a word, "distressed babies," that trigger a countrywide firestorm.

Girl in Glass is the riveting tale of 1 child's harrowing trip and a strong distillation of parenthood. With incandescent prose and an unflinching eye, Fei explores the worth of a human existence: from the spreadsheets wielded through cost-cutting executives to the insidious notions of threat surrounding smooth being pregnant; from the wondrous historical past of clinical innovation within the care of untimely babies to modern analyses of what their lives are worthy; and at last, to the depths of her personal fight to make feel of her daughter's arrival on this planet. in particular, Girl in Glass is a luminous testomony to how love takes carry while a start defies our basic ideals approximately how lifestyles is meant to start.

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Extra resources for Girl in Glass: How My "Distressed Baby" Defied the Odds, Shamed a CEO, and Taught Me the Essence of Love, Heartbreak, and Miracles

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My older sister is a part inch taller than me, my more youthful sister a part inch shorter. I by no means linked being small with being susceptible or insignificant. whilst my daughter arrived at one pound 9 oz., her dimension used to be the degree of her life. She used to be approximately as small as an individual might be. every thing approximately Tim Armstrong is gigantic. His identify, his rank, his titles. His six-foot-four construct, nonetheless that of the boarding tuition superstar athlete. The lengthy strides he is taking onto a level, his robust handshake, his deep, booming monotone. His visage on enterprise entrance pages and corporate rollout campaigns, together with his cinematic hair and cheekbones and jaw. His web worthy of 4 hundred million money. His mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, his multi-million-dollar wage. His global of mergers and acquisitions, industry capitalization and money circulation, shareholders and inventory innovations. I shake my head as though I’m shaking off a nasty dream. What if our daughter was once a drag at the company’s final analysis? What correct do i must bitch? “It simply doesn’t make sense,” Peter says. “That one baby’s health center debts may perhaps impact their funds. both Armstrong is mendacity or the corporate used to be reckless. ” I inform Peter to show on our convey. We either faux to monitor. Ever considering the fact that my daughter’s arrival, my disgrace and guilt appear to have taken up everlasting place of dwelling in my physique besides my organs and bones, as fastened and prevalent as they're unseen and unexamined. Likewise, my experience of being a burden, of encumbering others due to my failure to carry directly to my very own child, has turn into the hidden pulse of my day-by-day life. by some means Tim Armstrong controlled to broadcast these innermost emotions at a companywide assembly sooner than they grew to become fodder for the twenty-four-hour information cycle. And now that these emotions are available in the market for the area to digest, i will be able to ultimately take a more in-depth examine them myself. What did I do incorrect except adventure a scientific emergency? What assets did my daughter use except the medical insurance that my husband and that i bought? How did Tim Armstrong and his company expand themselves for my kin except through complying with the elemental phrases of our merits? Distressed infants. i do know approximately “distressed denims” and “distressed leather-based. ” I’ve heard the phrases distressed securities and distressed homes. Or distressed item: broken items. “Distressed infants” feels like one other little bit of corporate-speak, other than that I doubt it indicates up on any MBA vocabulary record. The time period is either a dehumanizing insult and a wierd euphemism that turns out meant to illustrate additional sensitivity at the a part of the speaker—as against, say, untimely infants or sickly infants or goddamn pain-in-the-ass infants. It goals for a express of sympathy whereas positioning the speaker because the hero of this state of affairs. It brings to brain a fussy little one wailing to be picked up instead of a toddler combating for each minute of her lifestyles. Distressed infants that have been born that we paid one million funds each one to ensure these infants have been ok often. in the end those months of suffering to claim these phrases myself—she was once born—now Tim Armstrong has stated them for me, in a context that implies that she most likely shouldn’t were.

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