Shaken Baby Syndrome

Yesterday at the health department, I was handed a stack of pamphlets, which I immediately shoved into my purse. I just reached in my bag and pulled out one at random. It's about Shaken Baby Syndrome.

Now, I'm no expert on Shaken Baby Syndrome, but I think it can be effectively summed up like this: if you shake your baby violently, its little brain can bang around inside of its little skull and cause permanent damage. People usually shake their babies real hard when they're frustrated that the baby won't stop crying. What I don't get is this: if a baby's been screaming for hours what makes one think that giving it a good shake is the best way to shut it up? If I shook a screaming kid and it suddenly stopped crying, I believe that my first thought would be, "Oh crap, I just broke something important."

It's sad to think that people need to be educated on this point. That the health department needs to print out flyers that literally say, "If your baby is crying, think about how much you love it before you react." Of course, these are the kids that end up in the foster care system, as Shaken Baby Syndrome is one of the more common kinds of physical abuse perpetrated against infants. Maybe they should hand those pamphlets out in the maternity ward of the hospital, too.