"I would tell my wife that this was the end of our life," he says. And he didn't see how things would get better. He started to see graphic images of committing violence to his child and himself. "That's when things started to spiral," he says. And when the practical tasks of parenthood – like getting his son to stop crying – proved to be a challenge, he thought it was his fault. He didn't need to be a physician he needed to be a father.
When she had challenges with breastfeeding, and he could use his medical background to help incorporate formula, he felt useful.īut then his role shifted. Since he had begun his career as a paediatrician in New Jersey, US, he'd heard one thing over and over from parents: "You're going to make such a good father someday." He had been excited when his wife became pregnant and gave birth. "I also started feeling like it was directed at me – that my son was crying because he did not like me." "I took it personally, like I'm failing, I'm not doing my job here," he says. But to Levine, it seemed like he cried constantly. Like many newborns, the baby took time to adjust to the outside world. Levine's anger and frustration had been building since his son's birth.
As a paediatrician, he knew shaking a baby could cause brain injury, even death. At the time, unable to think straight, he was convinced he'd done worse. He had put him down on a mat "maybe slightly rougher than I should have", says Levine today. It was 2013, and his son was two weeks old. For David Levine, the watershed moment came when he imagined he had shaken his baby.
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