The most profound similarities arising from modern neonaticide cases involve the patterned circumstances that lead to the infants' deaths .... [The women] spent hours alone, most often on the toilet, often while others were present in their homes. At some point during these hours, they realized that they were in labor. They endured the full course of labor and delivery without making a noise. After delivering the baby, the women's actions range from exhaustion to utter panic. Many of the women temporarily lost consciousness, leaving the baby to drown in the toilet. Others left the baby in the water while they frantically cleaned the messy remains of the delivery from the floors and walls of the bathroom. Still others immediately pulled the baby from the toilet and actively contended with their situations. In several cases, the women threw their babies out of bathroom windows. More commonly, the women suffocated or strangled the babies in order to prevent them from crying out. A few of the women silenced the baby with blows to its head or stab wounds inflicted with scissors.
