Baby Boy

Everyone knows the womb as the safe harbor that nurtures the developing fetus and shields it from danger. It's a rare baby who grows outside the womb, a miracle baby who survives nine months and emerges unharmed.Ten days ago, a 33-year-old woman in the waning days of an apparently normal pregnancy found out to her horror that her baby had developed outside the womb, nestled within a cluster of organs that have nothing to do with the reproductive system.And in a delicate operation that most obstetric teams don't perform in a career, a crowd of doctors and nurses at Sinai Hospital delivered a miracle -- a 6-pound, 4-ounce baby boy -- and patched up a mother who survived an ordeal that easily could have killed her."

I AM THE PROUD grandmother of a 5-pound baby boy.We call him Stewart, for Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart, in keeping with our family tradition of naming boys after famous Pennsylvania sports figures.I believe Stewart's father, my son, Joe, was named after Penn State coach Joe Paterno. I am not sure because my husband, who chose our son's name, has never actually commented on its origin. When asked by friends if "Joseph" is a family name, he says, obliquely, "It is now."Anyway, Joe is the father of Stewart, a healthy, happy, bouncing bag of flour.

An Anne Arundel County woman who had recently moved out west to have her first baby was found dead Friday in the Oregon home of a woman she might have met through Craigslist, police said. The baby also died. Heather M. Snively, 21, was eight months' pregnant with a boy and had been trying to purchase and trade baby clothes online, relatives said. Korena Elaine Roberts, 27, was charged with Snively's murder and also could face charges in the baby's death, said Sgt. David Thompson of the Washington County, Ore., Sheriff's Office.

On the deadliest day of 1993 -- a year approaching another record for murders in Baltimore -- five victims, three of them children, were added to the soaring homicide count yesterday.A mother and three children were killed in an arson before dawn and a 21-year-old woman was found stabbed to death in an alley later in the morning. Police are also investigating a sixth death as a possible homicide, a newborn baby who was discovered dead in a trash chute yesterday afternoon."I can't remember a day this year when there's been more," said Agent Doug Price, a police spokesman.

IN A BIG orange-and-yellow soundproof booth in Grand Central Terminal, people are telling the stories of their lives. For $10, they get 40 minutes to remember and record their piece of history. That's history with a small h, a tale, a story spoken that reveals as much about a place in time as an individual. There's the coincidence of two guys from Brooklyn meeting as soldiers in New Guinea during World War II - Where ya from, Bud? - and discovering they live on the same street and in the same building in Flatbush.

How can kids who never straighten their rooms be so fanatical about cleaning up the Earth? Maybe because they can blame their elders for our environmental mess, heaping on the guilt like so many layers of biodegradable compost.Whatever the reason, here are some books that will keep that Earth Day fervor going strong.* A patch of land that we might call a pasture is known as a paddock in Australia. "The Paddock: A Story in Praise of the Earth" by Lilith Norman, pictures by Robert Roennfeldt (Knopf, $12, ages 4-8)

The baby boy brought to mind astronauts landing on the moon -- his round face moving across the screen in a herky-jerky fashion that seemed strangely out of time. But to his mother, confined to a hospital bed 100 miles from home, the smiling boy in a camouflage suit was altogether real.Dabbing her eyes with the corner of her bedsheet, she waved to a camera perched on top of the video screen. Later, she typed out a message to her son, Derek: "How are you? Miss you already. Happy 4-month birthday.

Terry got pregnant. She was not married. She gave up her baby for adoption.Terry knows she had a daughter, but she does not know the name of her daughter. She does not know the name of her daughter's adoptive parents.I do.But I have promised not to tell anyone.A few days ago, Terry called and left a message, asking me to call her back.And I got very, very worried.Even though Terry gave up her daughter years ago, the names Baby Richard and Baby Jessica immediately came to my mind.And I wondered: Could Terry possibly want her daughter back?

 I am plural. My husband and I are expecting a baby boy in mid-June, but because it took us so long to get to this point, for a while it didn't seem real. Several bloggers I read frequently have noted that when you get pregnant after a struggle with infertility, at first it can feel like you're just playing the role of a mother -to-be. It was like that for me, after two years of trying. Eight home pregnancy tests, properly doubling beta blood-test results and two early ultrasounds be damned: For weeks, I felt like I was starring in some elaborate masquerade.

Leave it to an astronomer to spoil the New Year's party. There you stand with a pointy hat, a glass of Korbel and a nice glow, and here comes some wise guy who has seen the big picture. A picture to dwarf any silly human-centered notion of time. New Year? Stop, already.After peering through the NASA Hubble Space Telescope, a scientist at the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore said the other day that they now know how much time remains before our solar system dies because the sun has burned out. Nothing special.