Eliza Harrington Myers, MD, IBCLC

Not everyone describes their job as “magical,” but for Eliza Myers, MD, there is no other word for the moment when she hands a baby to her mother for the first time.

“Sometimes—hopefully—this happens in the delivery room and the baby is healthy and strong. But sometimes, this happens later in the baby’s life, after she has spent time being cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit,” says Dr. Myers, a neonatologist.

Dr. Myers says she is driven by a passion for improvements in her field. “We are getting better at taking care of premature babies, but we haven’t yet figured out how to stop them from being born prematurely,” she says. “As neonatologists, we must learn how to take care of babies so that every mother can have a chance to hold and take her baby home.”

When it comes to reassuring parents, she shares a simple message: "You are in the right place. We are taking care of your baby like he or she is our own."

And after she gets to help a mother hold her child for the first time, Dr. Myers has one other favorite duty: “swaddling babies tightly into tidy little baby burritos.”