Thursday, March 12, 2009

Opportunity 10: What to Expect...

Having heard Penelope Leach talking about her new book recently, and finding myself in a Barnes & Noble store with a few minutes to spare, I perused the baby literature.

The AAP mentions it three times, Penelope and Dr. Sears mention is once, but I was disappointed to find no mention of it in "What to Expect the First Year".

It, of course, is shaken baby syndrome.

What to Expect has an extensive section on crying and colic, but no mention of shaking or inflicted injury other than an allusion to scary feelings and unspecified child abuse. Not very helpful in developing a coping plan...

The lack of information about shaking, frustration and coping is really disappointing because the discussion about crying and coping with colic behavior is pretty good.

Baby literature tends to produce strong feeling for and against, but we've owned most of the What to Expect series and I think they're generally pretty useful resources...

It makes me wonder if the author, Heidi Murkoff, shares Oprah's phobia (from all accounts, Oprah's window has been completely opaque to overtures from the SBS community to discuss SBS: give the diverse nature of topics that are covered on her show, feel free to speculate among yourselves about why abuse would be excluded).

PS. Link to a sample AAP brochure on crying and colic, with education about the danger of shaking...

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