Every mom and dad knows that newborns, those little bundles of joy, can be angels or demons. When asleep, they're so easy to love, when awake and smiling they're just adorable -- but when it's 2 a.m. and they've been squalling for hours on end, they can be very hard to take.
And when they squall for such a long time, bad things can happen.
In the last year, Maine, tragically, saw 12 cases of babies with "shaken baby syndrome," the term for a brain injury caused by the violent shaking of an infant or small child. That's triple the number of cases during the previous year.
During just the last two months, Bangor's Eastern Maine Medical Center has had four cases of babies with serious head injuries. All were victims of actions by parents or caregivers that could cause longstanding or permanent brain damage or even death.
The increase in shaken baby cases is matched by another gruesome statistic: Between 2006 and 2008, the number of cases of severe physical abuse of children reported to the state has increased 40 percent. The state defines severe physical abuse as cases of children with broken bones, bruises and other evidence being treated violently.
And that increase isn't an artifact of increased public attention to the problem. "It's not just better surveillance or making the diagnosis more often," Maine child abuse expert Dr. Lawrence Ricci told reporter David Hench. "It's that more kids are coming in."
The No. 1 cause of shaken baby syndrome is prolonged crying by the child. So a new effort is being mounted in the state to help parents of newborns learn about crying and colic in babies while still in the hospital or birthing center.
The effort, spearheaded by the Maine Children's Trust and funded by private donations, uses a program developed nationally to fight shaken baby syndrome. It includes a video that features a number of families describing their experience with an inconsolable baby, their frustration and sense of powerlessness. It's paired with coaching by health care workers, both in the hospital and during home and doctor visits, on how to deal with the crying.
Prime among the lessons of the program is the message that a baby's incessant crying is normal and that it will pass in time -- and that parents who are at the end of their rope need to walk away to calm down.
The effort is an important one and we wish it much success. In New York State, one region that undertook a similar program saw a 50 percent reduction in abusive head traumas over five years.
But while we're encouraged by the tackling of this particular aspect of the problem, we're also horrified at the increase in child abuse cases in Maine and recognize that while we may be able to tackle one small -- but significant -- part of the problem, there's an even larger one that desperately needs to be solved.
Editorials represent the opinion of the Editorial Board of this newspaper: Publisher John Christie, Executive Editor Eric Conrad and Opinion Page Editor Naomi Schalit.
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