What happens inside the baby's brain can be devastating

Four-month-old Kaiden Stevens, Lamar, died in February, three days after having been shaken, according to news accounts that say Jonathan David Rector confessed to police later that he'd shaken the child.

Seven-month-old Adriana Bowers is in stable condition at a children's hospital, having suffered a life-threatening brain bleed after a shaking incident that led to first degree assault charges against Courtney Lindsey, a Joplin Globe report said Thursday.

Three-month-old William E. Bustamante suffered a brain bleed after his mother had shaken him, the Globe reported earlier this year.

The scenario's often similar in such cases -- the caregiver becomes frustrated and shakes the baby violently in an effort to quiet them. The baby threw up and became unresponsive. That's what news accounts said happened to Kaiden; and what Lamar Police Chief Ron Hager said happened in the Lamar incident as well.

Hager was attending when Kathi Olson, director of the Southwest Missouri Children's Center. demonstrated a shaken baby simulator to a crowd of Nevada Rotarians.

"When I heard about it on the news last night I was so upset. I go into schools and I talk to child development classes about shaken baby," and a number of other types of abuse, "and I was just in a school Monday morning ... I took my shaken baby simulator in, and we talked about it. And I always tell my students that more often than not, shaken babies are the result of a single mother, working, trying to support her baby, invites a person into her home, and she goes to work," leaving the baby with someone she knows little about, "And we end up on the front page of the paper, with these stories, and it just breaks my heart."

Presenting a doll with realistic features, except for lighted sensors that indicate when damage is likely to occur -- about the size of an infant of less than six months, Olson demonstrated the levels of what can happen when a baby's shaken. The simulated baby cries. Sensors indicate areas of the brain; often the first lights to come on are in the portion of the brain affecting eyesight. "If a child survives shaken baby, they will be blind," Olson said.

If all of the lights come on and the simulated baby stops crying, the child would be either in a coma or dead. Injuries also can occur from the grip adults have on babies when they are shaking them -- injuries such as broken sternum, broken ribs, or even broken legs have occurred, she noted.

Olson shook the crying baby, while noting that if it were a real-life shaking, the baby also would be flailing around, the caregiver would possibly be immature and would certainly be "fed-up", and the caregiver starts shaking the baby, sometimes even striking the child against a wall.

In a few seconds, all of the lights came on, indicating that a real baby in that circumstance would be comatose or dead.

"It's a great educational tool," Olson said, and she's willing to take the shaken baby simulator to any group who'd like the experience of seeing the simulator work.

Read Lynn A. Wade's blog at www.nevadadailymail.com//blogs/lynnwade/entry/47454/ for personal insights on the experience of using the simulator.