Prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome
Many of the injuries thousands of babies receive every year because of severe shaking can be avoided if parents and caregivers remember there is no excuse for physical force against an infant or child.
Shaking is primarily a failure on the part of the adult to respond appropriately to an infant that is crying.
Shaking can have dangerous consequences because infants have large heads and immature brains. Shaking can have dangerous consequences because infants have large heads and immature brains.
A baby's neck muscles can't support the stress of vigorous shaking; when the baby is shaken, its head moves in a sudden whiplash motion that can cause bleeding inside the head and increased pressure on the brain.
Shaking a baby can cause irreversible brain damage, learning disabilities, mental retardation, blindness, deafness, seizures, paralysis or death. When your baby cries, the most important thing to remember is to be patient. If the baby continues to cry and you feel frustrated, take time out.
It's better to put babies down in the crib and let them continue crying than to have them stop crying because they are dead.
Many new parents and caregivers may not understand that crying is the baby's only way to communicate, and that some babies cry more than others. Babies will cry because of hunger, the need to suck, pain from illness, teething or earache, colic, the need for comfort or cuddling, or the need for rest.
Here are a few tips to remember when the baby just won't seem to stop crying:
-
Make sure the baby is fed and dry.
-
Feed the baby slowly.
-
Burp the baby often.
-
Rock the baby gently or go for a walk.
-
Take the baby for a ride in a stroller or car.
-
Try a wind-up infant swing.
Perhaps the most important thing for parents to realize is that parents can injure their child if their anger gets out of control. These injuries aren't caused by a trivial shake or bouncing the child on the knee; there's nothing a normal caretaker will do to cause this other than completely losing control.