Into this world.

The flight to Nicaragua is shorter than to New York, but after working in a public hospital in Jinotepe for a week with a group from my medical school, I was amazed to see how different medicine can be so close to home.

There, the patient-doctor relationship is one of utmost trust and the standards of sanitation are non-existent, yet lives are still saved. "I don't know how, but we help people," Dr. Garcia, the chief of pediatrics, told us.

Of everything I saw in Jinotepe, the newborn babies fascinated me most. On my first day, I worked in obstetrics and saw four deliveries. There is nothing more beautiful than watching a baby enter this world, hearing its first cry as it gasps for its first breaths and to watch as pink seeps over its initially blue squirming little body.

Later in the week, I learned to review neonates cranially to caudally, inspecting fontanels, noting heart and respiratory rates, checking for distended abdomens, testing palmar and plantar grasp reflexes and looking for any abnormalities. They were the most precious, tiny things lying there innocently, swaddled, sleeping or crying, and I wished each of them everything good in this world even though I will never really know who they are.

My new knowledge of embryology made the perfection of babies so much more wondrous to me. There is so much that could go wrong – incorrect folding, misalignments, signals left on or off – but for so many, everything comes out just right, and a single cell grows into a embryo then a fetus which becomes a living, breathing, thinking, capable human being.

Some think science impedes faith. For me, medical knowledge has augmented my belief that there must be a higher power, because I have seen no person who could create a machine so beautiful and flawless as another human.

As I saw mothers hold their babies for the first time, the universal, natural mother-child bond was clear.

“WHENEVER I WENT OUT TO PLAY, MY MOTHER WANTED TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I WAS GOING TO BE

When I’d come in, she’d call me into her bedroom, take me in her arms, and cover me with kisses. She’d stroke my hair and say, ‘I love you so much,’ and when I sneezed she’d say, ‘Bless you, you know how much I love you, don’t you?’ and when I got up for a tissue she’d say, ‘Let me get it for you I love you so much,’ and when I looked for a pen to do my homework she’d say, ‘Use mine, anything for you,’ and when I had an itch on my leg she’d say, ‘Is this the spot, let me hug you,’ and when I said I was going up to my room she’d call after me, ‘What can I do for you I love you so much.”’

Krauss, Nicole. The History of Love. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.