Aside from some important discoveries that emerged from DNA microarray analyses of the stool samples (see "Baby's First Bacteria," Lab Book), Palmer enjoyed the human element of the research.

"We became close," she says of the mothers. "I wouldn't just pick up the poop and leave. I'd stay for a chat."

Indeed, Palmer participated in some of the families' most intimate moments. A few weeks before their due dates, the mothers were asked to provide vaginal swabs. "I met the moms immediately after their doctor's appointments," Palmer explains. "They'd hand off the swab and I'd walk across campus with it in a mini-ice-chest to the deep freezer." The mothers also called Palmer when they went into labor so she could bring to the hospital a small cooler for storing the baby's first poop. Called meconium, that first stool was, in Palmer's words, "a whole different beast." The thick, tarlike substance proved nearly impossible to work with, particularly on microscope slides.

Mothers provided samples of their own first postpartum stools, and also breast milk. Later, fathers were asked to make a contribution in the form of a stool sample. "Most, but not all, were cooperative," Palmer says of the fathers.

One of the more mundane eye-openers for Palmer, who has no children and was just recently married, "I hadn't realized just how many diapers a newborn baby goes through every day!"

Photo: Chana Palmer

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