What Sick Babies Can Teach Us About Life and Health

My TED Talk describes the lessons that even the tiniest lives can teach us about health, life, function, gratitude, and finding perfection in the most unexpected places.

Video : What Babies Can Teach Us About Life and Health | Annie Janvier | TEDxNewRiver

(Duration: 18 minutes)
In this TED talk, discover how NICU families can transform our understanding of resilience, medical communication, and the importance of function et hope, even in the most challenging circumstances.

Life Lessons Babies Teach Us

Introduction & Background

• I’m a neonatologist, or as I tell parents, a “baby doctor”. My role involves caring for newborns facing medical conditions and NICU admission, for example those born prematurely.
• Decisions in neonatology are generally taken on data and statistics.

Research Experience

• In 2002, I investigated life-and-death decisions for babies with rare conditions like Trisomy 13 and 18, where palliative care was recommended because doctors and researchers thought their quality of life was unacceptable, and their mortality was high. We asked parents of who lived with those children what they though. Although most children had passed away at the time of the study, parents’ experiences told a different story.
• Many children lived happy (even if short), albeit complex lives, enriching their families despite profound disabilities.

Personal Story

• My own daughter, Violette, was born extremely prematurely. Facing medical language like “incompetent cervix” made me reflect on the medical language that is used.
• My husband and I, despite our medical backgrounds, struggled to navigate the NICU and complex decisions we had to make.

Key Insights from Parents

• Parents value practical, personalized information over detailed standardized medical data.
• They seek balanced perspectives, including potential positives, and want to understand how a diagnosis will impact their child’s daily life, not just survival odds. They need to hear about function.

Rethinking Medical Communication

• Traditional neonatal labels like “severe disability” don’t always match parents’ experiences.
• Parents often experience unexpected positive transformations, like deeper gratitude and stronger family bonds.

Takeaway Lessons

• Families of sick babies emphasize the importance of focusing on function, not diagnosis.
• Sick babies teach us about resilience, gratitude, and rewriting our stories.