What makes us the way we are? Is it the genes? The childhood environment? Or could it be that many of our individual characteristics--our health, our intelligence, our temperaments--are influenced by conditions encountered before birth? That's the claim of a provocative field known as fetal origins. Scientists are developing a radically new understanding of our very earliest experiences and how they exert lasting effects on us well into adulthood....

In 2015, after an outwardly uneventful pregnancy, Megan Nix's second daughter, Anna, was born terribly small and failed her newborn hearing test. Megan and her husband learned that Anna is completely deaf and could have lifelong delays due to an infection in the womb with cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a disease Megan unknowingly contracted from her toddler during pregnancy. Remedies for Sorrow is lyrically written and a searing critique of the paternalistic...