“Don’t EVER shake a baby!” I have no idea if my entire generation watched the same PSA during Saturday morning cartoons about shaking babies or if there was simply a wave of incidents covered on the local news during our formative years, but for some reason, many of us grew up being told that there aren’t many things you can do with a baby worse than shake it. This makes sense. Any sort of sudden jarring motion could potentially cause unseen internal damage. None of us felt any need to argue against this.

What I did find myself wondering as I grew up was why on earth anyone would feel the need to shake a baby. In my limited experience, babies could be annoying if they cried too long, and the idea of changing my little brother’s poopy diaper led me to dry heave, but I never felt the desire to shake a baby. It was hard for me to understand why there was such a strong campaign against an act that seemed like the last thing anyone would want or think to do while holding a little human.

About a month into my parenting journey I was taking a late night shift with my sweet daughter. My wife was nursing at the time, and since my usefulness for that part of caring for a child was exceptionally limited, I usually tried to take over the final stretch of the 3 AM routine by changing her diaper, and coaxing her back to sleep. In general, drunk on breast milk, my daughter usually drifted off to sleep with little to no drama. On this particular night, she was inconsolable. I tried every trick I had learned in the previous 30 days, double checking that she had burped adequately, rocking side to side, and rubbing her back in small circles while she screamed in my face. After what felt like hours (which in reality was more like 30 minutes) my exhausted brain got exceptionally frustrated with this whole process. “How stupid is it that I have to coax a human to do the most basic thing all living beings do every single day? Sleep should be easy!” On this night, her inability to sleep had doomed me to being awake at an hour that I had previously never seen with such regularity. I was livid. I was frustrated.

And I wanted to shake a baby.

Of COURSE I did not. Everyone calm down. But intense frustration can sometimes manifest itself in physical ways. Some people get angry and punch walls. Others throw down eyeliners in frustration after trying and failing for 45 minutes to match their left eye to their right. It is not unusual for anger or frustration to be expressed with almost involuntary physical actions. This is mostly fine when what is closest to you is an inanimate object. But when the closest thing to you is a living, breathing, delicate, and defenseless baby, anger, frustration, and exhaustion can mix together in a dangerous way.

I suddenly understood how parents who had a few less threads of mental fortitude than me in that moment might do something involuntarily. This does not excuse violence of any kind against any child (or adult for that matter). However, I could see how in a perfect storm of circumstances, exhaustion, and chemical imbalances, parents can express anger physically. And this understanding came from a dad whose body was not recovering from one of the most traumatic physical experiences a human can face. My hormones were not raging up and down as my body desperately sought to re-establish equilibrium after putting forth effort to form another human body. I was just a tired dad, but the moms who have grown children inside of them often face seemingly insurmountable feelings of despair while trying to care for a new little baby that has changed their life and their body forever.

Dark thoughts while parenting, especially in the first year, are not as strange as you might think.

The problem is, no one ever talks about these thoughts. So parents feel terrible, alone, and borderline psychotic. I am here to tell you that those dark thoughts are common. They present themselves in a variety of ways, but inclinations and thoughts that we would normally never face can surface during the early months of parenting. And it’s ok.

What’s not ok is being silent about it. If you have a partner, talk to them honestly about these thoughts. If you know other parents that have gone before you, ask them what their experience was. If you are the birth mother, talk to your doctor, and don’t give up until you are adequately assessed for postpartum depression and anxiety. You will never know if your feelings and thoughts are normal or extreme without talking about it. By remaining silent, you will never hear the stories of other parents who faced the same thing, and you will never know if you need some sort of medical help to manage the darkness. Talk about it, and keep talking about it.

With both of our children, my wife suffered with PPD.

For our first child, we were clueless. We did not know what was normal, and even with me, my wife did not feel safe speaking about the thoughts she was facing. After making it through the darkness (and getting help after our second child was born), my wife began speaking more openly about her experience. During one conversation, I recall her mom struggling to understand. My wife encouraged her to think back to when her kids were small. “Was there ever a day when you just felt sad or overwhelmed as a mom with young kids?”

“You know, there was a day a woman came to the door selling something,” my mother in law recalled. “I remember looking at this pretty, young, and energetic young woman and comparing myself to her. Her life seemed so perfect and mine seemed terrible.”

At the time, my mother in law had three children under five years old, and when she compared her chaos to the seemingly put together businesswoman at her door, she faced some of those dark and complex feelings my wife was trying to explain. She remembered, and she understood. My wife learned that even her mother faced dark thoughts while parenting, and she never would have known this if she had not openly shared her experience with her mother. Don’t get me wrong;

I understand why we don’t want to talk about these things.

Sometimes the thoughts are so extreme we feel traumatized for even having them. We fear the judgement from others who may not understand. We are embarrassed that parenting isn’t as fun for us as it seems to be for others. Ultimately, we recognize the thoughts are outlandish, and admitting you’re having such extreme thoughts is a scary thing to do. So we often stay quiet. But when we stay quiet, we perpetuate the parenting culture of struggling alone. When you choose to be honest, you might find more parents that have felt the same way. I’m not saying that misery loves company, but there is something magical about discovering that you aren’t alone in something difficult. Simply understanding that others have been in the same place as you can give you the fortitude to stand up against those thoughts. There may be parents in your life you love dearly that are struggling silently. By refusing to share your own troubling thoughts, you might be reinforcing their self-imposed isolation in regard to dark thoughts.

If we all start talking, all of us will start healing. And maybe our children will grow up to be moms and dads that feel safe talking about the dark parts of parenting so they won’t feel alone in the struggle like we did. Speaking up helps everyone, but most importantly, it will help you emerge out of the darkness and into the light.

Dark Thoughts While Parenting

And I wanted to shake a baby.

Dark thoughts while parenting, especially in the first year, are not as strange as you might think.

With both of our children, my wife suffered with PPD.

I understand why we don’t want to talk about these things.