WORLD OF THE NEWBORN <i> by Charles and Daphne Maurer (Basic Books: $20.95) </i>

No wonder babies bawl at birth. After surviving the journey from the weird and otherworldly environment of the womb, which sounds like a pulsating water pump working in tandem with a double bellows, infants are assaulted by a “sensual bouillabaisse” in which sights have sounds, feelings have tastes, and smells can cause dizziness. “The wildest of 1960s’ psychedelia,” the authors write, “could not begin to compare with the everyday experience of a baby’s entry into the world.” “The World of the Newborn” combines joyful, stylish writing with responsible reporting based on an impressive survey of medical literature written in English. The authors (Daphne is a psychologist, Charles, a writer and photographer) are scientifically conservative, wary of the wisdom spun at home during the baby boom.

They debunk a host of common assumptions not supported by a sizable body of empirical data, from French obstetrician Frederick Leboyer’s belief that the transition from the womb to the world should be as gentle as possible (“both his claims and any serious concern about discomfort caused the newborn by a normal delivery seem unwarranted”) to sophisticated infant diets (“while there are clear medical advantages to breast-feeding a baby, nothing else about feeding babies has been shown to be an asset or a detriment”).

The authors’ dismissal of the conventional wisdom sometimes seems out of hand. They doubt, for instance, that the “individual details of a baby’s life can have any lasting effect.” But mo19369903192032168822moving objects as standing still; and though they appear to sleep most of the time, they are in fact conscious 24 hours a day.