Babies cry. They cry a lot. The average baby cries 2-3 hours daily. A quarter of all babies cry more than that. Some cry a lot more than that. Babies crying isn't a soft wailing. It can be a shriek or scream that drowns everything else out.

Parents are pushed to their limits, often times, by these crying fits. Sleep deprivation, mental exhaustion, and overwhelming stress further push these parents.

Every year hundreds of children, the estimates vary between 600 to 1400, are picked up by their caretakers, and shaken so forcefully, that their brain is battered against the inside of their heads with enough force to cause brain damage and hemmorhaging. Many of these children go blind as their retina hemmhorage. Many are permanently stopped from advancing mentally past the age they received the injury. Most die.

The force required to damage a child isn't caused by a simple bouncing, or tossing a child into the air and catching them. These cases are caused by people whipping their childs head back and forth at least 3-4 times per second. The sad thing is, the damage caused by this actually stops the child from crying. Positive reinforcement is seldom uglier than this.

When children are hospitalized for SBS, there are usually other signs of abuse. These children frequently sport indications of having been thrown by the shaker at a wall or to the floor. Telling people that "you shouldn't shake your baby" isn't enough. People who do this are abusers. Being a parent is overwhelming, but don't let it slip into a fit. Never let things overwhelm you to this point. Ask for help. It's there.
