Perhaps the biggest shock of my life came after its greatest moment. After experiencing the euphoria of holding my firstborn seconds after he came into the world, I returned home two days later to a sobering reality. I was sore and exhausted with a new life dependent on me for his survival.

I was not prepared for the sleepless nights or the crying. Before leaving work, I had told my boss that I planned to get a lot of reading done on my maternity leave. A mother herself, she just laughed. Later, I understood why.

My son awoke every two to three hours at night wanting to be fed, so that each morning I woke up too tired to move and very cranky. Sometimes, he would cry for hours, and I couldn’t console him even after I had run down the list of possibilities: a dirty diaper, hunger, gas or just a need to be held. I even tried dancing with him. As my anxiety rose, so did my frustration. In those moments, I was glad that my mother had come to stay with me for the first month so that I could pass my son to her when I felt I would snap. In those seemingly endless crying hours, I understood why parents felt angry at their innocent, screaming infants. I wouldn’t hit or shake my child, but suddenly, I truly understood their frustration.

In a survey of parents of children younger than 2 years old in North Carolina, researchers found that more than 2,000 of these children are shaken by a caregiver each year and that serious injuries result for some. Only about 40 of these children are admitted to a hospital intensive care unit, and of those, 10 die and another 27 suffer serious, long-term health problems like mental retardation, blindness or cerebral palsy, according to the survey. Now, two major universities in our state are working to prevent this problem with a shaken-baby prevention research project, the first such statewide project in the U.S.

The $7 million project brings together child abuse prevention experts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Injury Prevention Research Center and the School of Medicine and Duke University Medical Center. It aims to educate every parent of a baby born in North Carolina each year about the hazards of shaking and give them alternatives to use when they feel they need a break from a crying baby. Plus, parents will learn the characteristics of crying in healthy infants through the “The Period Of PURPLE Crying” intervention program.

PURPLE is an acronym to help parents remember the pattern of crying for healthy infants: It Peaks at 2 months of age and ends at 4 or 5 months, if not earlier; is Unexpected; Resists soothing; the child appears to be in Pain; it is Long-lasting (2-5 hours); and occurs more in the Evening. And here’s the best part: The word "Period" clues parents in that this experience of increased, frustrating crying is temporary and eventually ends.

I only wish I’d known about PURPLE before. My son’s crying followed this pattern exactly, and I would have been less anxious had I known that it was normal and would run its course. For parents, this period of crying is particularly hard because it usually takes place in the evenings of those months following childbirth when the parents are exhausted. But for legions of parents whose babies are yet to be born, the knowledge and coping techniques gained from the “The Period of PURPLE Crying” intervention program will help them understand and protect their children.

Because shaking is a leading cause of infant mortality in the U.S., this project has the potential to reshape the futures of babies in every state.