I spent the better part of last night listening to my daughter exercise her lungs. Who knew that such a small thing could pack in so much raw energy? If she were belting out "Che gelida manina" from Puccini's La Bohème or "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix" from Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila, I would have applauded her artistic abilities. Even if she were performing her own cover of Queen's " Bohemian Rhapsody," I would have given her props for her taste in music (it was, after all, one of the many songs she regularly heard in utero). Sadly, while my poor baby may have been stretching the golden pipes, music it was not. It was the high-pitched shrieking that babies seem to muster only after the clock strikes one in the morning. For over an hour, I had the privilege to listen to this performance and several encores.

I'm not proud to say it, but shaking her into submission did cross my mind several times. It's very sad that babies are shaken and beaten to death; but, now that I have one, I have a bit more sympathy than I would have had a year ago. I can only imagine how difficult it is for a young couple who are already highly stressed because of a new baby and all the changes in their lives. Then, add to that stress several weeks of sleep deprivation because of a colicky baby. It can be a pressure cooker waiting to explode. Sadly, the infants are the ones who suffer the most.

Fortunately for my wife, my baby, and me, I do not have a violent streak, which seems to be the final ingredient to the deadly shaken baby cocktail. Instead of doing any harm to my crying baby, I simply walked into her room at regular intervals, leaned down, kissed her on the head, and told her that everything would be OK. She needed to go to sleep just like everyone else in the building needed to go to sleep. At some point around three a.m. she seemed to have gotten the idea and finally fell asleep. Alas, it was only for a few hours; but that was enough to allow me to get a few hours of shuteye before she started up again around six.

This morning, as we lay in bed with the baby between us, I looked at her sitting up on the bed playing with her feet and cooing. I was reminded of all the reasons I didn't throttle her last night and would never think of doing harm to her, even as I toss and turn in bed trying to drown out the sound of a shrieking baby at two in the morning:

• Walking in the door after a long day at the office to see her smiling from ear to ear
• Hearing her utter some random noise that if you turn your head just right, squint your eyes, and scrunch your nose sort of sounds like "daddy"
• Seeing her stretch her hands up to me to be picked up
• Watching her crawl for the first time
• Watching her stand on her own for the first time
• Seeing her sitting amidst all the tissue that she has just removed from a new box of Kleenex
• Holding her whiles she's sound asleep in your arms
• Hearing her angelic laughter
• Seeing her sound asleep in her car seat
• Watching her splash in the tub
• When she makes kissing sounds