The Incubator at 24 Weeks

When Elise Thornton went into labor at just twenty-four weeks, the doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville already had a plan. Before her son even drew his first breath, a team of neonatal specialists had prepared a microenvironment in the NICU — temperature calibrated to the degree, humidity set to protect paper-thin skin, a ventilator ready to breathe for lungs barely formed.…