Yep. She’s also going to love chocolate and Big Macs. Kids don’t always dislike what’s bad for them!
Seriously, a tickle won’t hurt her. A tickle, followed by tossing her into the air, then swooping her down onto the couch so that her head jiggles and bounces, and then blowing bubbles on her tummy so she wriggles and her head falls backwards off the edge of the couch as you catch her might be a different story. Kids’ brains aren’t so tightly tethered in their craniums as grown-ups’.
Head banging isn’t good even for adults, but mostly because it can stretch or tear muscles in the neck and shoulders. I’d say it’s probably right out for babies.
They’re not made of spun glass, but they are still vulnerable in some ways.
No one ever told us (I’ve been a parent for 22 years now), but it seemed pretty self-evident.
What was not self-evident at the time was that those bouncy chairs that hung over a door could snap a child’s neck; that made the news at the time. We hadn’t bought one, though, so it wasn’t much of an issue to us.
[hijack for parents]
The only thing I worried about was choking, but my father gave me a tube that was the size of a child’s windpipe, so that as long as they didn’t get their hands on something of that diameter or smaller, they were safe.
BTW, a hot dog is almost perfectly designed to cut of a child’s air supply. Watch out for them.
[PSA]They make choke tubes to test the size of objects, but most baby books say a toilet paper roll is close enough if you don’t have a tube.
Hot dogs, grapes, jelly beans and other round object should be cut in half diameter-wise before slicing, so they don’t roll down the tongue and block the airway.[/PSA]
WhyNot: Yep, that’s what he gave us, though back in the stone age they didn’t have the pretty graphics.
My current crusade is to get my wife to throw out all the Playmobil crap we have from our kids childhood. I don’t know why those little pieces of plastic failed to kill them, but I’m damned if I’m going to let them have another crack at it should I ever end up with grandkids.
Every time I’ve had a baby, I was told never to shake the baby. The first time, that information seemed rather obvious to me, so I was a little freaked out, wondering if I looked like a potential child abuser. Later, I figured out that it’s pretty standard practice to drum it into new moms’ heads. And presumably, some people must not know that it’s dangerous.
This last time, the nurse who was giving me the talk glanced at my chart and said, “Oh, your third? I guess you’ve heard this before, but here goes anyway…” I suspect in some hospitals it’s required, whether it’s your first or fifteenth baby.
I’m pretty sure there was never any official notification, but Ms. Plan B and I read so many books and articles and watched so much educational TV that it’s almost like asking “Did anyone ever tell you your name?”
This thread does remind me of one creepy icident about 20 years ago, before any of our kids were born. A highly educated couple in our neighborhood had a first baby and I saw the dad carrying the baby in a backpack the first week. The baby clearly couldn’t suppoort his head. It looked awful, but I didn’t know a damn thing about babies at the time. The couple moved away shortly and I never heard from them again. But when my first son was born I asked the pediatrician about that incident and he told there was a good chance that they caused permanent brain damage by doing that.
So much for the “Let’s just do it naturally” approach. I’m glad we paid for a full time live-in baby nurse.
I’ve seen “Never Shake a Baby” on billboards. Maybe on buses, too. One of the billboards I saw had a photo of a little girl baby on it who apparently died from SBS.
That might have been Christian Dubisky, shaken as a 4 month old by his abusive father in 1996. He died 6 years later from respiratory failure, after living a life with no cognitive function, 24 hour a day oxygen, epileptic seizures once a minute, cerebral palsy, blindess, detached retinas, cataracts and glaucoma and no ability to eat and no thyroid function, which meant (among other things) that is body could not regulate his temperature - all due to his shaking. His is a heartbreaking story, and can be found on his website. It mentions on there that his father, in jail for 10 years, was due to be released earlier this year, but also that he was potentially facing murder charges because Christian eventually died because of his shaking. I don’t have any recent updates.
I’m also one of those who know it, but can’t remember being told. And part of my adoption classes was stuff like how to bathe a baby, so it wasn’t that they didn’t cover the obvious.
Before they let us leave the hospital, we had to sit through a talk about baby care and parent support options. We were told about shaken baby syndrome. Additionally, the nurse who gave it told us that one of the parents who had been sitting in that very room with her about 3 months before was recently arrested for killing his baby by shaking.
We also got flyers and magnets about it in the piles o’ stuff they gave us, along with the “Back to Sleep” anti-SIDS campaign material.
Yeah, we got the shaken baby thing and the back to sleep thing covered extensively in both our childbirth (Bradley method) classes and the pre-discharge seminar they held at the hospital.
Of all the things I remember being taught at the hospital, never shake the baby is number one and back to sleep is number two, with keep your kid in the car seat a close number three. We had to sign a form stating we had seen the video and knew we were not supposed to shake the baby. It’s drilled into your head more than anything else, IME.
Yes. We took parenting classes that were required by our adoption agency. “Shaken Baby Syndrome” was covered in detail, as were some other dangers to babies and toddlers.
I knew about it anyway, and I admit I am shocked that anyone having a baby would NOT know about it. But, it is surely a good question.
