How is Shaken Baby Syndrome So Dangerous?

Every new parent knows the frustration of a baby who just won’t stop crying. Caring for a newborn is exhausting, and it’s easy to fall apart when nothing seems to help: not feeding, not music, not a walk around the block or a drive around the neighborhood.

It’s enough to ask: why exactly is shaking a baby so dangerous?

Doctors actually know less about it than many other threats.

“By definition, nobody can do the experiment,” said Dr. Walter Lambert, a UHealth Jackson Children’s Care pediatrician at Holtz Children’s Hospital who has extensively studied child abuse. “No one is willing to stand up and shake their own babies.”

Even without that kind of research, many experts rely on decades of case studies and newer advances in understanding brain injuries.

A baby’s brain, like an adult’s, is surrounded by fluid and tissue to keep it safe inside the skull. It might move around during regular activities like burping or sitting on mom’s lap in a rocking chair, and it might even tap gently against the inside of the skull.

With aggressive shaking, however, it would bang against the sides over and over again. It’s easy to understand the damage that could do. Vision injuries, brain damage, and even death can occur – the risk can be high without ever hitting the baby or throwing them against another surface.

The result can be what doctors call “abusive head trauma,” and what others generally call “shaken baby syndrome.”

Dr. Lambert, the medical director of Jackson Memorial Hospital’s child protective services team, is a father of six, and certainly sympathetic to the frustration of parenting a screaming baby.

“Sometimes babies cry, and people get frustrated,” he said. “It’s OK to put the baby down somewhere safe and just walk away.”