Child Development & Public Health
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is the leading cause of infant deaths, ages 1 month - 1 year, in the US. This hit home recently when a close friend of mine lost her child to SIDS at the tender age of 4 months.
SIDS is maddening because there is no specific cause for SIDS. There are, however, risk factors such as: smoking, drinking, or using drugs during pregnancy, poor or no prenatal care, prematurity, low birth weight, babies born to teen mothers, second hand smoke, overheating, and babies who sleep on their stomachs. Sadly, most of these risk factors are known due to facts reported after a child dies from SIDS. My friend’s baby had none of these risk factors. He was a normal weight and seemingly healthy. He died in his sleep for no apparent reason.
In 1994 the Back-to-Sleep campaign was launched to encourage parents to put their children to sleep on their backs to help prevent SIDS. Parents are also educated about the other risk factors. In NC, where I operate my child care center, child care providers are required to have SIDS training every 3 years. We are also required to write a safe-sleep policy, share it with the parents, and post a signed copy by each child’s (1 year and younger) sleeping area. We are also required to do visual checks on sleeping children every 15 minutes and record it on a check list. As a child care provider, one of my biggest fears is losing a child to SIDS and I would require these measure in my center even if NC did not require them.
I find it very disturbing that the US ranks 2nd in the world in SIDS deaths, with only New Zealand having more reported deaths attributed to SIDS. Japan has one of the lowest SIDS rates. I hope that researchers keep looking for the cause of SIDS and find a link to help us prevent death among these precious babies. Death is always hard, but losing a baby seems to be the hardest death to accept, especially when there is not always a clear answer to why the baby died.
2 excellent websites for more information on SIDS are:
Have you been touched by SIDS?
Hi Monette,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear about your friend's son. I too am a Tarheel. I have been living in Greensboro, for the past 15 years and we too have to make sure that we complete SIDS training every 3 years, and make sure that parents sign the sleep from before the child starts. We also required to fill out a 15 minute sleep chart. Do you guys have to do one to? What part of NC are you from. Great website I too hope they find research for this syndrome.
Monette,
ReplyDeleteGreat Topic! SIDS is something that is on the uprise, where I am from. It was a three month old baby that passed last Sunday due to SIDS. I think parents need to be more aware of things to do such as laying babies on their back to sleep, keeping soft objects out the bed with the baby, and avoiding overheating. If we can educate our parents then we have saved at least one life.