I have three daughters.  The first two are 14 months apart, the second and third are 20 months apart. I had a tiny babies, sleep deprivation, and very little help during the most frustrating times of new motherhood.  There were weeks on end where my daughters would cry, hours and hours a day, and there was very little I could do about it.

I remember sitting in my rocker, night after night, shifting my baby girls from position to position, walking with them outside, driving them in the car and so on… just to try to calm them.  Eventually, I would just sit and cry with them until we both fell asleep, only to repeat the process again the next day.

I now know that the Period of Purple Crying, the time between about 2 weeks and 4 months old when babies cry for no apparent reason for hours on end, is just a normal phase in life.  Unfortunately, it also coincides with a new mother’s deepest exhaustion, greatest stress in doing everything right, and post pardem emotions and possibly depression.

And when you add a desperate, tired, frustrated parent and an inconsolable little baby, bad things can happen.  Like Shaken Baby Syndrome.  We all know how catastrophic is can be to shake a newborn baby, even just a little.  And anything we can do, as mothers, daughters, and a society to educate and remind parents – mothers AND fathers – about the dangers of Shaken Baby Syndrome, is a cause I want to be on board for.

The organization, Click For Babies is amazing!  All they ask is that knitters across North America knit or crochet PURPLE baby hats in baby soft yarns and donate them to a participating hospital to be given to babies in November.  The objective is to have every baby leave a hospital with one and that a tired, frustrated parent is reminded during the Purple period to walk away if they have to and leave the baby in a swing or a safe crib, as opposed to shaking them.

Here are the details of the Call for Knitters:

Knit or crochet from 5 to 50 purple baby caps using soft baby friendly yarn and send them to the closest participating hospital or the National Centre in Utah. The aim is to have a hat for every baby born in November at participating hospitals.

By knitting and sending PURPLE newborn baby caps to be given to babies across North America including hospitals in North Carolina, Seattle, Iowa, Kansas, Maine and Ontario, you will make a difference by:

  • Raising awareness for this life-saving project – Period of PURPLE Crying – Prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome
  • Participating in a growing, province-wide grassroots effort to educate new parents about the normalcy of early infant crying and how to cope with the frustration that can accompany it.

You can join the Facebook page, follow them on Twitter or find hat patterns and photos at the Click for Babies website for more details. To find the hospital closest to you, visit http://clickforbabies.org/ and select “Knit”.

Now, I can not knit.  And I do not have time to learn between now and November.  But I can donate!  But instead of donating on the Click for Babies site, I thought I would send out a challenge to my readers.

The reader that knits the most hats for this campaign and donates by mail or taking them in to their local hospital will get $15 Paypal cash $30 PAYPAL cash from me and Kim at RainyDayPennies.com to help reimburse for materials!  I can remember that period in my infants lives so well and believe so strongly that we can stop Shaken Baby Syndrome with awareness and education that I will pay for $15 worth of yarn for these hats!

Thank you to Kim with RainyDayPennies.com who saw this post and sent me a message that she wanted to match my Paypal Cash Payment to the one who knits the most hats!  What an amazing thing to do! 

All you have to do is knit between 5 and 50 hats, take them to a local participating hospital and then send me a picture via comment or email at lomargie at gmail dot com.  The reader who does the most will get the $15 on October 30th, 2011!

So click those needles together, spread this message around and let’s start obliterating Shaken Baby Syndrome!

**Paypal cash rules:  ONE reader will be chosen to receive the cash.  NO CHEATING will be tolerated.  If I think the photo submitted is altered or manufactured in any way, the reimbursement will not be issued.  The photo should be sent with a note about how many hats and where you donated them.  If no one claims the $15, it will be donated to the Click For Babies campaign.  I am trying to help babies here… please be respectful of that.**