Photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

When Tara Smith reads to her infant son, Jacob, nurses have noticed that his oxygen-saturation levels rise — which is a good sign.

Tara Smith (left) helps nurse Amy McAden clean Jacob Smith’s nostrils and breathing tube.

Why read to tiny babies?

• The more the senses are stimulated, the more quickly the rest of a baby’s brain will develop.
• The effort of focusing on pictures develops eye muscles. And each time he hears a particular word, it imprints more strongly in his brain.
• By age 1, babies have learned all the sounds needed to speak their native language. The more stories you read aloud, the more words your child will be exposed to and the better he or she will be able to talk.
• You’re helping make a connection between the things your baby loves the most — your voice and closeness to yo u — and books.
• Very young babies may not know what the images in a book mean, but they are still able to focus on them, especially on black-and-white patterns.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends reading aloud daily to your baby starting at 6 months of age — about the time when he’ll really begin to enjoy looking at books with you. Jim Trelease, longtime read-aloud expert and author of “The Read Aloud Handbook,” says you can start when your child’s a newborn.
• Sources: Child Literacy Centre , American Academy of Pediatrics, kidshealth.org

She had never been admitted to a hospital before, never even been seriously sick.

Tara Smith was having a relatively smooth first pregnancy until Aug. 29, when she went in for a checkup and learned that her blood pressure was dangerously high, a sign of pre-eclampsia.

Six days later, Jacob Michael Smith was born via Caesarean section -- 10 weeks ahead of his Nov. 15 due date.

Weighing just 3 pounds and 1 ounce, he was smaller than a Barbie doll.

He fit into his father's hand.

Before Tara and Michael Smith even had a chance to hold him, nurses whisked their son into the neonatal intensive care unit at Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital. They hooked him up to a ventilator and tubes, and all manner of beeping machines.

With underdeveloped lungs and a possible intestinal tear, his future was precarious.

Jacob couldn't even cry because he had a tube stuck down his throat.

An English teacher at Hidden Valley High School, Tara Smith did the only thing she knew to do: She pulled a chair next to his incubator and began to read.

Knowing he'd be there for weeks, maybe months, she had picked something epic: the Harry Potter series. She'd been meaning to read it for years.

She started at the beginning, with the title of the first chapter of the first book.

"The Boy Who Lived," it was called.

Asleep in the chair

She read daily for hours at a time -- 150 pages usually, sometimes more. She read until her voice became hoarse.

Doctors started pulling up chairs to do their paperwork so they could follow along with the story. Nurses and other moms listened, too.

Jacob was a few weeks old when he managed to pull his breathing tube out from his throat. Equipment beeped and alarms blared, and he had to be hooked up to a different style of respirator.

Though nurses assured her he was fine, 25-year-old Tara was so worried that she spent the night in the NICU -- staring into space, napping, reading more about the young wizard with the scar.

"I came in the next morning and found her asleep in the chair," recalled NICU nurse Amy McAden.

As the first book segued into the second, Tara was calmed by the bubbling water in Jacob's new respirator. It reminded her of a cauldron in Professor Snape's class.

"It occurred to me then: Harry Potter is probably the best character I could introduce him [Jacob] to," Tara said. "He's so young and small, and, like Harry, he's having to face down all these demons."

Not long ago, doctors recommended testing Jacob for cystic fibrosis, a disease that runs in Tara's family. It had stolen the lives of two of her cousins, who were just 8 and 18 when they died.

Breathing easier

By the time she started "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," the fourth book, Jacob had been in the hospital five weeks. He'd already taken his first ambulance ride: The entire NICU ward was transferred from Community to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital on Sept. 18.

"He had eight doctors with him during the move," Tara recalled, laughing. "I thought, how many doctors do you really need per pound?"

Last week, the cystic fibrosis test came back negative. Last week, Tara and Mike finally got to hold their son.

The snuggling has put a dent in Tara's reading time. She's down to 50 pages a day. "Given the choice, I'd rather hold him now than read to him," she said.

But when she reads, the nurses have noticed, Jacob's oxygen-saturation levels rise -- a sign that he's breathing better and feeling calmer.

Not long ago, when a nurse warned of the series' tear-jerker ending, Tara leaned toward Jacob and faked a frown. In her serious teacher voice, she told the boy: "If you're still in the hospital when I get to the seventh book, you're going to be in a lot of trouble."

The Smiths hope to take their son home in a month.

As of Wednesday, Tara was 100 pages into book four. The young wizard was in one of his usual jams, about to embark on a Quidditch tournament and full of adolescent angst.

As of Wednesday, Jacob was 5 pounds, 8 ounces, and down to just a single IV in his arm. He's bigger than a Barbie now and recently was moved from his plastic incubator to a crib.