This magazine started because a book ended and the questions didn’t. The Silence Between Two Heartbeats is one family’s account of a hard NICU stay and the uncertain months that came after it. Since it came out, people who work in neonatal care, in research, and in family advocacy have kept asking me some version of the same thing: what does the wider evidence actually say about what the story describes? Beyond the Heartbeats is our attempt to answer that honestly, one issue at a time.
I want to be clear up front about what this is, because here the line matters more than it does for most magazines. This isn’t a peer-reviewed research journal, and nothing in it should be read that way. It isn’t a clinical resource either, and nothing here is medical advice for any particular baby or family. What it is: a place where a family’s story can sit next to the real, cited research, with the two kept clearly and deliberately apart.
Keeping them apart is really the whole project. A memoir can notice things a medical chart was never built to hold: what a parent is afraid of at 3 a.m., what happens between appointments that nobody writes down, what a diagnosis sounds like when you’re on the receiving end of it. But noticing something isn’t the same as proving it. Every research claim in this issue has its own citation, and every personal piece is labeled as testimony, not evidence. When the research is thin or incomplete, or just hasn’t been done yet, we say so. We’d rather leave a gap visible than cover it with something that sounds more certain than it is.
This first issue is also an honest look at how early we are. Several pieces, clearly marked, are frameworks still waiting for a clinician to take part. They aren’t finished clinical content. We’re publishing them anyway, openly, because showing the scaffolding seems more honest than keeping quiet until it’s hidden. As real contributors, reviewers, and clinical advisors join us, future issues will look less like drafts and more like a finished publication. This is where that record begins.
If you’re a clinician, a researcher, or an HIE parent and you’d like to help shape this, as a reviewer, a contributor, or an advisor, the Contributor Guidelines later in the issue explain how to get in touch.
A T M Haidar Khan
Editor-in-Chief, Beyond the Heartbeats · Author, The Silence Between Two Heartbeats