![]() It’s OK to put the baby down and ask for help.” Take a deep breath, relax, whatever it takes. “I say to parents when they get really frustrated - it’s OK to let them cry. “It’s going to be more frequent when there are more stressors on parents,” he said. While sometimes abusive parents are depressed and may use alcohol and drugs, there is no typical case, according to Hagan. “In families, you don’t always knows what goes on behind closed doors,” Hagan said. The girl is now in foster care, quadriplegic, on a feeding tube and unable to see or hear. In a recent controversial case of a teenage mother who is fighting a do-not-resuscitate order from child welfare officials, 6-month-old Aleah Peaslee was brain-damaged when her father allegedly violently shook her. Both children were “known to the system,” according to Hagan, who consults for the state in diagnosing the most difficult cases and co-chairs the Department for Children and Families’ citizens advisory committee. And in Poultney, 2-year-old Dezirae Sheldon died after her stepfather allegedly squeezed her head so tightly, her skull was cracked. In Winooski, 14-month-old Peighton Geraw died of head trauma. ![]() Vermont, where Hagan works, had two high-profile homicide cases in the last year. ![]() “It’s very complex to prosecute these parents because it often goes unwitnessed. Babies up to 4 months old are at greatest risk and inconsolable crying is the main trigger.īut Hagan says many cases go unreported, especially when the abusers are not prosecuted. “It’s just a matter of thinking about it.”Īccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, abusive head trauma is the leading cause of child abuse deaths in the United States, taking the lives of more than 1,500 children a year. “If it’s a very ill-appearing baby, it’s not hard to make the diagnosis,” said Hagan. If the fontanel, the soft spot on an infant’s skull is “full,” an MRI or CT scan can identify lesions behind the eyes and skull fractures. In diagnosing abusive head trauma - something that has raised some controversy - doctors first look for outward signs of trauma. When the brain pushes down on the brain stem, breathing can stop. It bangs against the skull, killing neurons, breaking blood vessels and causing swelling. The shaking has a whiplash effect on the brain, which is composed mostly of water. In the classic case, an adult holds the baby around the trunk with chest facing them, putting the thumb over the child’s collar bone and fingers along the head or spine, “vigorously shaking back and forth, away from you and back to you,” said Hagan. “Shaken baby syndrome” was coined in 1984, but the American Academy of Pediatrics changed the terminology to abusive head trauma to broaden medical understanding of how the blunt impact and violent shaking or a combination of the two can cause bleeding within the brain or eyes. ![]() Long-term medical care for these children can range from $300,000 to more than $1 million, according to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome. They may be able to eat and walk, but they are going to have remarkable intellectual impairment.” “The vast majority have cerebral palsy caused by the brain injury and develop floppy spasticity and feeding problems,” he told NBC News. Hagan, clinical professor in pediatrics at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and the Vermont Children’s Hospital. “Babies who have significant injury to their brains may never recover,” said Joseph F. They not only place a heavy burden on the adoptive parents who raise them, but on social services and schools. One abusive head trauma expert says that not enough attention is being paid to these survivors, who may be in a permanent vegetative state or have lifelong neurological disabilities and seizure disorders. ![]()
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