The room was lined with baby after baby, and it was almost too
warm for Keri Dykes to tolerate. She remembers squeezing between
the incubators to see her son Jesse, who had been born only 25
weeks into her pregnancy. A neonatal intensive care unit in
Tupelo, Mississippi, is where Jesse spent his brief life in 2008
-- a life cut short by an infection that got into his
bloodstream and lungs. The first time Dykes, 29, got to hold him
and look at him face to face, she remembers that his pretty blue
eyes were open as he was dying. "It's just something you never,
ever think will happen to you," she said. Jesse happened to be
born in the state where babies are less likely to reach their
first birthday than in any other state, according to the most
recent data (PDF) from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. For every 1,000 Mississippi babies born in 2011, 9.4
died before their first birthday, according to the state's
health office. That makes Mississippi's infant mortality rate
more comparable to countries