A few years ago a friend of the family, 4 month old baby died from sudden infant death syndrome. She was asleep in her crib and never woke up. She was lying on her back, covered with a blanked (in January), and it was no toys in the crib. The autopsy found nothing out of the ordinary which contributed to her death. They said it was SIDS. It was a very painful moment for family and friends.
What is SIDS:
SIDS is suspected when a infant, usually younger than 6 months of age, is found dead in bed (while they sleep).
Facts about SIDS: from
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/sudden_infant_death_syndrome_sids/article_em.htm
- About 90% of SIDS deaths occur in infants younger than 6 months of age.
SIDS is not predictable or preventable.
SIDS is not caused by immunizations or bad parenting.- SIDS is not contagious or hereditary.
- SIDS is not anyone's fault
- African American babies are twice as likely to die of SIDS as white babies
The U.S. SIDS rate remains high, compared to other developed countries.
For example, in 2005, the US. rate ranked second highest (after New Zealand) among 13 countries in a research study by Fern Hauck and Kawai Tanabe.
Some of the lowest SIDS rates in other countries were in the Netherlands and Japan.
As a future child care professional I will utilize everything that I learned about SIDS to keep parents informed.
As a future child care professional I will utilize everything that I learned about SIDS to keep parents informed.
I had a baby monitor that detects breathing and has an alarm when the baby stopped breathing and I would still wake up and go check if my son is ok. One morning my husbands alarm went off and when I woke up I realised that I did not get up for Josh during the night. My heart went into a panic and I ran to the room to find him fast asleep- the first time he slept through. I'm so happy that you posted those points on SIDS especially that it is no one or nothings fualts, parents who loose children to easily blame themselves.
ReplyDeleteKelisha that was so sad to hear. I am guessing that the parents of that baby have played back and fourth in their mind what went wrong, if they had done something wrong, or if they could have done soemthing to prevent it. I have never known anyone who has lost a baby while it slept. I could not even imagine that pain that a parent feels after having their baby to die.
ReplyDeleteIt must be so painful to lose a child to SIDS. Fortunately, that did not happen to me, but I worry a lot about my teen mothers. I have a high population of Afican-American teen mothers, which combine the two risk groups, race and teenage mother. Information about prevention is so important.
ReplyDeleteI also chose SIDS to research. It looks like we used some of the same resources.