Help Spread the Word

Recently, I had yet another co-worker come back from the ER in tears.

Why?

Because another baby had been found suffocated and dead beneath the sleeping body of a parent.

Another family frantically called 911. Another EMS crew worked feverishly in the back of a bouncing, speeding ambulance, siren screaming the warning all the way to the hospital. The ER staff with nursery support pulling out all stops, doing everything possible to revive the infant. The family standing by speechless, in shock, as it became evident that the baby had been without oxygen for too long.

If memory serves, that is the 8th baby in the tri-county area to be accidently smothered to death while sleeping with an adult this YEAR.

Please, please, please, tell everyone you know to never, ever sleep with their baby. That includes letting a baby sleep on your chest while you are laying on the couch. Drift off to sleep, roll over and you will have either an injured baby from falling on the floor or you will have a dead baby suffocated between you and the couch cushions.

And I know, the number one excuse I hear is that when breastfeeding, it's easier to have the baby in bed with you. Sure, until you wake up and find your baby dead.

And not one of those eight dead babies' parents thought that it would happen to them either. There are special bassinets made now that you can snug right up beside your bed and one side comes down so you can slide the baby to you for feeding, then back into the safety of his or her own bed when finished.

This is a silent epidemic that is out of control not only here in the low country, but across the nation. When you hear "SIDs" or "crib death", it is rarely really a case of a baby found not breathing in a crib. Mostly it is a "roll over" death where some one rolled over on the baby and suffocated it.

As a night shift nurse, I have this conversation (and have been accused of being "mean" and "rude") with new mothers very frequently. We do formalized teaching, we show videos on the subject. All the hospitals in the area do this.

And still, eight babies are dead so far this year. And eight families have been changed forever.

Loki sez: That's why I don't sleep with Thor, he rolls around like a marble in an earthquake.