What You Don’t Know About SIDS Could Hurt Everyone

I have heard that the joy of being a parent far surpasses any other life experience and that the feeling is hard to describe in words but is more than made up for with smiles and tears. Even though I can’t begin to contemplate the feeling of motherhood, the loss of motherhood is even more devastating to think about. Every day an average of seven babies die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome—known as SIDS—and every day seven sets of parents go from the best feeling in the world to the worst feeling in the world. October is SIDS Awareness Month and because so much research is needed to figure out this confusing and traumatic event, we need all the awareness we can get. In October 2007, the Scripps Howard News Service started a reporting project called Saving Babies: Exposing Sudden Infant Death in America trying to understand the over 2,500 infant deaths per year in the United States alone and how SIDS may be the cause of most of them. SIDS can be the cause of an unexplained death of an infant from the age of one month to one year old. Called SIDS in America, North America also uses the term “crib death,” while the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand call it “cot death”. In most cases, the babies are usually found dead after having been put to bed and show no signs of struggling or suffering coinciding with a clean autopsy ruling out any possible medical reason for the cause of death. This program is aimed at instituting better regulations for investigating infant deaths, working under the assumption that some of the deaths could have been avoided but due to poorly funded and overseen research into these autopsies, parents are left more empty-handed than ever. First Candle, an organization specializing in infant health and safety, responded to the Saving Babies project, “We applaud the efforts of the Scripps Howard team in pulling together this in-depth study and opening the door for increased efforts in advocating for the mandatory use of standardized protocols for autopsies and death scene investigations, and consistency in the reporting of this data, for all sudden infant deaths,” said First Candle’s Executive Director Deb Boyd.
While there is not one main cause for SIDS, past research has narrowed the risk factors down to a prenatal and post-natal checklist formed by the pattern babies who have died of SIDS have shown. Prenatal risk factors for babies more susceptible to SIDS are: maternal nicotine use, inadequate prenatal care or nutrition, heroin or alcohol use, many births less than twelve months apart, carrying excess weight, pregnancy among teenagers, and the sex of the child with 61 percent of cases of SIDS being male. Post-natal risks include second-hand smoke exposure, not breastfeeding, high temperatures in the child’s room, lots of blankets or bedding in the crib, a low birth weight especially under 3 pounds, and putting babies to sleep on their stomachs.
Recently there has been a short relief in SIDS research because staph infections have been implicated in about 10 percent of SIDS deaths, a new study by The Women and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, Australia was published in the September 2008 issue of the Archives of Disease in Childhood. Although this is a great advancement for the causes of SIDS and a break in the case that will most likely be followed up with better prevention for staph infections in the future, there are 90 percent of SIDS-related deaths that still need to be investigated. In order to save yourself or a loved one from the worst feeling in the world, get involved this October and become knowledgeable about SIDS so you can be prepared for the best part of pregnancy, parenthood.