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Shortly after I had completed an infant-observation course while training, I myself had a baby, and squirmed as I looked back on the reasonable detached reports I had written about an intimate situation observed from the outside. The lesson was one I retained when supervising baby observations myself at the Institute of Psychoanalysis. I am, therefore, delighted to find in this book not only descriptive material drawn from weekly observation-reports of trainees but, in the commentary on these, some attempt to gain an internal focus - access to emotional events subjectively lived inside the family, observed and experienced through the observer's countertransference. Although commendably sparing in its aim not to ‘over-direct’ the reader, the interpretive discussion following each fragment of observation treats the narrative as a text to be read creatively. It tries to extract from the observation the meanings implicit in the powerfully charged unfolding process of emotional reformulation following the birth of a baby. This commentary is thus similar to a secondary process of elaboration on case-material such as occurs during group discussions in infant observation training seminars, while leaving the original text intact and open to inspection for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.