New evidence suggests not all cases of Shaken Baby Syndrome are caused by shaking.

Imagine having been sent to jail for shaking a child who later died, except you know you didn’t shake that child, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Then imagine — based on “fierce disagreement among doctors about the shaken-baby diagnosis” — that after 11 years in jail, your conviction was overturned, and you were set free.  Only by then, your husband had divorced you and taken your three daughters to live with him.

That frightening tale is the real life story of Audrey Edmunds, a former secretary who left her job to start an in-home daycare.  In the early 90s, one of her charges, 7-month-old Natalie Beard, “suddenly collapsed while drinking a bottle of milk” and was found to have “the triad of shaken-baby symptoms.”  Natalie died, and Edmunds was convicted of “first-degree reckless homicide.”

According to Emily Bazelon’s New York Times expose on the problems with the Shaken Baby Syndrome diagnosis, “A small but growing number of doctors warn that there can be alternate explanations — infections or bleeding disorders, for example — for the triad of symptoms associated with shaken-baby syndrome.”   Continue reading »

Tweet

9

Pin It

Who needs a doctor, a hospital, or all that fancy — not to mention expensive — medical gear when you’re having a baby?  Certainly not Alana Sanders.  She’s got her own delivery team right there at home: her 11-year-old daughter Faith and 9-year-old son Jabari.  With a 9-1-1 dispatcher on the phone, the pair calmly delivered their new baby brother.

Continue reading »

Tweet

1

Pin It

When a study identifying about 9 percent of new mothers as having suffered post-traumatic stress disorder came out last year, reaction was predictable. Some people, even my own colleague Hannah Tennant-Morre here at Strollerderby, took issue with the idea that birth was being characterized as a traumatic event, that somehow, as Hannah put it, maternity equates with pathology. But some of us, who’d endured delivery-room experiences that were some of the worst moments of our lives, nodded in recognition.

Now one of those mothers, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, has written a powerful piece for Salon detailing how her son’s nightmarish birth sent her into a tailspin Continue reading »

Tweet

12

Pin It

The Other Side of the Glass – For more funny movies, click here

Until now, all the important birth films — The Business of Being Born, Orgasmic Birth, Baby Mama — have focused on women’s experiences during pregnancy and labor.

But a Missouri filmmaker has turned her lens on fathers and their babies, who, as this eight-minute clip shows, are having traumatic experiences of their own during birth.

What could possibly compete with the pain of a dilating cervix? Continue reading »

Tweet

17

Pin It