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MyHealthNewsDaily
On Dec. 29, 2009, Dearea, a mother in Baltimore, lived every parent's nightmare. After taking her 1-month old son Charlie out of his bassinet in the early morning, and laying him down to sleep next to her when he had finished nursing, she awoke later to find he was not breathing.
She yelled to her husband to call 911, and to her mother to begin CPR. They rushed Charlie to the hospital. "I'm praying that he's going to be ok," Dearea later recalled.
There had been no signs of trouble before that day. Dearea had had a healthy pregnancy, and brought Charlie home shortly after he was born.
But after Charlie was taken to the hospital, doctors informed Dearea that there was nothing they could do to safe her son's life.
In following weeks, Dearea, who did not want her last name used in this story, called the medical examiner's office every day to see if they had determined the cause of Charlie's death.
When she finally received the death certificate, she learned Charlie had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS. The medical examiner informed Dearea her son's heart had stopped, but there were no signs of crushed ribs or suffocation.
"It was such a relief, almost, that it wasn’t my fault," Dearea said. "[It's] hard for a mother to live with the fact that you could have done something else," she said.
Charlie was one of the more than 4,500 infants in the United States who die suddenly from no obvious cause each year. Anytime there is a sudden unexpected infant death (SUID), experts investigate. Sometimes a medical examiner will find the cause; if a cause of death cannot be determined after an investigation, the death is deemed to be caused by SIDS, or "unknown cause."
But the sole listing of SIDS on a death certificate reveals little about how the baby really died. With a new database, called the SUID Case Registry, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, experts are now aiming to collect detailed information about such cases to figure out how to better prevent such tragedies.
Health officials have already investigated more than 1,000 cases over the last three years, and have used that information to begin to implement prevention strategies.
Unclear cause of death
The main problem when researching cases of SUID is often that medical examiners may classify deaths differently depending on their level of training and experience, as well the information that they receive from the scene.
"To one medical examiner, everything is suffocation. To another, everything is SIDS," said Lena Camperlengo, program coordinator of the SUID Case Registry.
The database collects more than 1,200 variables related to each case, including information about where the baby was sleeping, what position he was in when he was found, whether there were additional items in the crib, whether the baby was breastfed and whether there have been any other cases of SIDS in the family.
Often, parents are asked to re-enact, with dolls, how they placed the baby down, and how they found the baby after his or her death. The position of the nose and mouth in the re-enactments can help a medical examiner determine whether a death was due to suffocation, Camperlengo said.
Currently, nine states receive funding to collect information for the database (Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Wisconsin), and many others are collecting the information voluntarily. Previously, such detailed data may not have been gathered, said Shannon Stotenbur-Wing, director of Center for Child & Family Health at the Michigan Public Health Institute.
Prevention strategies
Michigan researchers reviewed 140 cases of sleep-related infant deaths in 2010. In nearly 60 percent of cases, blankets were in the crib, bassinet or playpen where the child was sleeping at the time of death, Stotenbur-Wing said. An ideal baby bed consists solely of a firm crib mattress covered by a fitted sheet, with no additional blankets, toys or other objects, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Registry information from Michigan also showed that mothers in 70 percent of cases were on Medicaid. Now, parents of newborns on Medicaid in the state are given brochures on safe sleep. It took a push to get the brochures made and distributed, but "it's saving lives," Stotenbur-Wing said.
New Jersey is working to get information on safe sleep into family resource centers, said Lisa Hartmann, program manager of the SUID grant in New Jersey. Hartmann said she has worked to understand parents' circumstances, and recognizes that not everyone has the resources to purchase a crib for their baby, or keep it when they move.
Hartmann said it's important to encourage parents not let their babies sleep in the parents' bed, and tells them the baby would be safer "in a drawer on the floor," than in the bed with them.
Hartmann is also working with the New Jersey department of education to have middle schoolers make drawings of safe sleep environments, which will be entered into a calendar contest. The calendar will be given out at Medicare and Women, Infants and Children (WIC) centers, Hartmann said. This way, the message will reach both younger and older generations.
After Charlie passed away, Dearea was part of a public service campaign on safe sleep for B'more for Healthy Babies, which aims to improve the health of babies and mothers in the Baltimore area. She said she had not received information about safe sleep before she was a part of the campaign.
Campaigns are a good place to start, but Dearea said there should be more research into the risk factors for unexpected infant death.
"It shouldn’t be that the only way you found out [your child is at risk] is through an autopsy," Dearea said. "There should be some kind of warning," she said.
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My heart goes out to those parents, including my cousin, who have lost a child to SIDS.
I hope the cause--and thereby, the prevention--will be found soon.
Did the baby have any "vaccinations" the day before the incident?
Unfortunately, all infants are at risk and there is no kind of warning signs. It's frightening, I know, but true. Sometimes infants just stop breathing, it's called apnea and it causes respiratory arrest which leads to bradycardia then cardiac arrest. If someone is present during the onset of symptoms, ( such as color change/ cyanosis), the infant can be stimulated to breathe by flicking the soles of his feet or patting him on the back, as long as there isn't an undiagnosed cardiac defect. My heart just aches for this family, so very very sad.
While I appreciate the depth of your feelings, there is no relationship between apnea and SIDS. For many years, this was not thought to be the case and apnea monitors were commonly prescribed by physicians trying to allay the anxieties of worried parents. Now there is general agreement among doctors who deal with SIDS that apnea and SIDS are not related. Apnea refers to the cessation of breathing, almost always self limited, and rarely the cause of death. SIDS or near miss SIDS is complete cardiorespiratory arrest and even vigorous resuscitation at the time of the event is often unsuccessful. This issue has been thoroughly researched and is no longer controversial. Apnea monitors do not prevent SIDS.
SIDS is a dx of exclusion. It really means "unknown" and with 100% certainty, there are a number of different underlying causes for these deaths. Research has not concluded that there is a sole cause that includes a "complete cardiorespiratory arrest" 100% of the time. MEs still have a hard time excluding suffocation in infants at all, and a large portion of SIDS deaths still involve a lot of suffocation risks, such as co-sleeping and excessive blanketing.
I'm not advocating or suggesting you disregard measures suggested by health professionals that could assist with the health of your children. However, in addition to what they may suggest, you may also consider the larger picture of what sustains life on this planet.
60% of all Michigan Study cases used blankets according to this article. And? So the remaining studies died without having blankets, so how do you derive blankets as being the root cause of anything, and why would 60% be significant? Don't most people use blankets? Wouldn't that explain why there is a high percentage of cases where blankets were present, because most people use them.
70% of deaths involved parents being on Medicaid, therefore don't sleep with your children, and watch out for blankets. Did I miss a course in logic at some point? Now if 40 and 70% of these cases died from asphyxiation or hypoxia, I would say, let's see what's causing them to get less air or more specifically oxygenated air. However the cause of death was that there was no apparent cause of death, so on what basis are we singaling out sleeping arangements and blankets?
So 70% of these parents are on medicaid and may not be able to afford cribs. Well 70% of them also may have to drink municipal tap water where only half of the contaminates are regulated and considered legal in any amount. Not to mention that the EPA and federal government agencies invest very little in protecting rivers, reservoirs and groundwater from pllutants. Water used for formula and nursing. Furthermore they most of these women may eat corporate raised meat products and genetically modified corn and soy. Products both used not only in formula but in the farming industry as feed.
Poisoned drinking water, GMO crops know to cause birth defects in lab tests in significantly lower quantities than are used for human consumption and agriculture. Not to mention that crops and livestock or given the same poisoned water. You might wonder what the cover up is, there is certainly a blanket over something.
Just being curious, I went to State Health Facts dot Org. If my theory is plausible, you would expect the highest infant mortality rates to reside in the states that are responsible for large corporate agriculture, chemical processing and oil/gas drilling and mining. Let's look at infant mortality and death rates per state. most deaths occur in states where larger agriculture/oil/gas/mining/Chemical and fuel refining are major players. Coincidence? The highest numbers of pre-term births are in the same states.
Coincidentally these states are also the major water tributaries of rivers and lakes and ground water. With only a couple noted exceptions being Texas and Nevada. Let me think, Texas has some of the largest oil refineries and chemical plants. Nevada is only the most nuclear detonated state in the union. A place only followed by the Bikini Atolls, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
other sources ewg dot org and gmoevidence dot com
You have appealing theories, but the incidence of SIDS is even higher in many isolated indigenous people than it is in industrialized societies. The most effective prevention for SIDS was found to be having infants sleep on their backs by an enterprising public health nurse in New Guinea. The extremely high incidence of SIDS in New Guinea prompted desperate measures, which fortunately for us all proved to be very effective. The initial findings were disparaged as being too simplistic to be true, but as more and more countries adopted these sleep position strategies, the incidence of SIDS plummeted world wide. Of the children who still die, we know many of the risk factors. Teen pregnancy, prematurity, parental smoking, poverty, lack of prenatal care, co-sleeping, maternal obesity. None of these predict SIDS, but they do give a portrait of high risk factors. So far your theories are not among these risk factors.
Well said. The guess (I won't even call it a theory) that blankets or stuffed toys contribute to SIDS is just that. Guessing. My four children all had blankets when needed and all survived nicely. To deprive babies warmth and comfort because of guesses is inhumane and foolish, IMHO. Scientists need to grow up and stop with platitudes and guessing and just present the facts to mothers. The mother's burden is great enough, just by losing their babies without this.
I agree. Correlation does not prove causation. It's research 101. There could be a number of other factors. It could still be environmental, genetic, or a number of things. I think one must be careful about trying to find simple solutions to complex problems.
So many things to reply to but I will address just the blankets. Even tiny babies wiggle around but do not have good control of movement. So they can end up under a blanket and not get enough oxygen - their systems are so much more delicate that any small thing that throws it off kilter can have bad results. Being too warm is also a risk factor. If they are tightly swaddled AND covered with blankets they may not be able to throw off excess heat. Over the years other risk factors that have been noted are male gender, fall or winter births, prematurity, stomach sleeping, apnea (which may be associated but has not been shown to be a cause), maternal alcohol use, smoking in the house and overheating. Preemies, for example, have trouble regulating their body heat and require more than full-term infants, but not THAT much more - hat, light swaddling, room temp in the low 70s, for example. They also have apnea episodes more frequently than full term. I expect when the cause of SIDS is discovered it will be a complex combination of factors, some of which it may be possible to change (from stomach to back sleeping, for example) and others beyond our control.
it is the laundry, the fabric softener is the problem, allergic reaction that stops breathing.
In January, 1990, our 20 month old son died in his sleep. The autospy stated "unexplained death" as the cause of his passing. The day before our son had his immunizations...oral polio, Hib, and DPT. Coincidence...I don't think so. He was 20 times too old for SIDS We were an upper class family. Doctors and the coroner didn't agree on cause. We did discover that the pharmacuetical company was aware that the batch and lot number on the DPT (diptheria, pertussis and tetnus) shot had caused problems around the country with other children. It has been 22 years since Thomas died and I think about him everyday. My life has totally changed since this happened...so sad.
Sleepless, I'm so sorry for your loss. It's so hard to say what caused your son's death and perhaps it was one of the vaccines, but he received so many in one day it's hard to pinpoint which one. My son had a violent reaction to DPT at 3 months, he survived but it was a miracle. The doctor said it's possible he was allergic to the pertussis portion which is a very common problem. His next vaccine was only DT (no pertussis) and he had no reaction. On the other end of the spectrum, I have a friend who refused to vaccinate her child, he contracted chicken pox resulting in severe brain damage. He suffered a massive stroke at the age of 2 and now has up to 100 seizures a day. He's not expected to live to adulthood. I honestly don't know what's right.
So sorry for your loss, Sleepless, but I really do think it was a coincidence. I suspect it might be easier to find a cause of death today than in 1990, though even now there are unexplained deaths, not just in infants and children but adults as well. Usually the cause is an unsuspected heart arrhythmia or viral infection. It could even have been an allergic reaction not to the viruses in the vaccine but to a filler. That happened to a grown woman I know who had severe issues with, she thought, ibuprophen, but found it was the "inert" filler used by the manufacturer that gave her such a problem. This relation between SIDS and vaccines has been investigated worldwide by many organizations, without finding a definitive link. For example, a study using Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) data, which included children who were covered by a managed care organization health plan, found no association between immunization and deaths in young children. The study investigated deaths in children one month to 7 years of age between 1991 and 1995. Data were analyzed by comparing vaccination histories for each vaccine during the week and month prior to the date of death for each child. Five hundred and seventeen deaths occurred between 1991 and 1995, most (59%) during the first year of life. Of these deaths, the results did not show an association between immunizations and childhood deaths.
It doesn't make your loss any easier but I hope, as you keep Thomas in your heart, you can move forward with some peace.
Sleepless
Read Dr. Hulda Clark books.
Fortunately, the world will be soon saved from SIDS due to the amazing suggestion of their 'expert' in this article.
As soon as all the poor in the country start making their babies sleep in a dresser drawer without a blanket....DSS will take all these at-risk kids and 'save' them. That is assuming they don't freeze to death first!
Millions of children slept in dresser drawers (even shoe boxes as newborns) around the world, including here. You don't need a blanket to keep from freezing to death - just warm clothes (including a hat and socks or a footed onesie) and a warm room.
They also have wearable blankets now, commonly called "sleep sacks." They keep baby warm without the risk of the blanket coming up around the nose and mouth.
They are fabulous!
My daughter has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (Type 1). It manifests between the ages of three to eight months in infants. We discovered this when she had a cold that she couldn't shake, along with some breathing problems. It was a long, heart-wrenching process that was a horrible diagnosis to face. That said, there is a form of SMA called Type 0, where a newborn develops the disease swiftly and without much warning. This could be the culprit in many cases of suspected SIDS. Something I strongly advocate is, in a pregnancy, if an insurance or medicaid agency covers it, get a genetic test done on the fetus. This is the only way SMA is detected before presentation in infancy.
My son was 16 and almost died. He had Wolf Parkinson White. He had no other symptoms. I looked further into this and found he might have Bragada Syndrome. I contacted Brugada who has a web site and my doctors did some testing and did not find evidence of this. However, in my search I found Brugada and other channel defects can lead to cardiac death especially at night. The phillipines have a name for this for death of yound people. It is genetic, but can be a new mutation so not seen in other family members. If family hx of death in night in a younger age ie 30 or less, this should be considered. They should get blood and test for the known defects that cause these channel defects (ie transimitter controls for heart conduction).
Advising parents not to sleep with babies is absurd. To say "we don't know what causes this...but let your baby sleep on the floor in a box..." Absurd. Prolonged crying in an infant is their way of saying something is terribly wrong, this is why babies cry extensively when separated from mom at night. My wife and I cosleep with our 2 kids. It is important to mention that we don't do drugs or drink as these may cause problems in bed with baby. It is not possible to spoil an infant with love and attention. To all new mothers: You don't have to suffer through letting your baby "cry it out." Crying it out was something invented by the evil quacks of the mid 20th century, it was in vogue from the time of doctor Spock in the seventies and misinformed men and older women force it on new families for no good reason. THERE IS NOTHING BETTER FOR A NEW MOTHER AND BABY THAN SLEEPING AND BREASTFEEDING TOGETHER. Anything else is cruel speculation.
I believe it is now recommended to let a baby cry for 10-15 minutes to see if s/he settles down but after that check and pick the baby up to settle him/her down. Bed sharing IS a risk factor for SIDS especially if the infant is young (under 2 years, especially under 12 weeks) and there is a smoker in the family.
There's nothing better than sleeping together, huh? Tell that to all the parents, who were not drunk or on drugs, that have rolled onto and suffocated their infants while everyone slept.
Our daughter slept in our bed when she was young. She wouldn't sleep in a crib, so it was out of desparation and a need for sleep that it started. I have never regretted it. The thing is to make sure you are careful. As stated, no drinking or drug use, no smoking (at all, the smoke will stay on your clothes and skin) and plan where the baby will sleep (I suggest it shouldn't be between the parents but next to one but with some sort of prevention that the baby won't be pushed out). If it can't be done right then use a crib.
I don't think it is recommended to let the baby cry like that. It is now proven that when under stress - such as crying alone for any length of time - will release cortisol into their systems. It is a hormone that kills brain cells. I wouldn't knowingly do anything like that to my kids.
Advising healthy moms not to sleep with infants is absurd. On one hand they say the syndrome is unexplained and on the other tell moms not to sleep with babies. If you are drunk or high then you should not have kids at all, let alone sleep with them. Every new mother know instinctively that an infant sleeping in a box on the floor is wrong; the terrible crying fit of their baby tells them so. "Crying it out" was an absurd invention by cruel men like Dr. Spock in the mid 20th century. It is outdated and would be gone if men and old women, and the state of Mich. didn't keep insisting new moms torture their infants. It is not possible to spoil an infant with love, attention, human contact and breast milk 24 hrs. a day. Anyone who can't live up to this needs to consider if the should have a baby at all. NEW MOMS, ITS OKAY TO SLEEP WITH YOUR INFANT! But then, deep down, you already know this.
The reason why it is not recommended that parents sleep with their babies is due to co-sleeping increasing the risk of SIDS. Even if the parents have no risk factors, such as using drugs or alcohol or being smokers, co-sleeping still increases the risk.
I did not see in this article where it said to allow a baby to "cry it out". It is possible to have a baby sleep in a crib without having them cry it out.
It's the mattress. Google Toxic Gas Theory SIDS. This is why it strikes poorer families more than wealthy and 2nd/3rd/4th-born children more than 1st born who get a new mattress. This is why it happens with co-sleeping. Wrap your mattress in polythene. Read about the New Zealand mattress wrapping campaign.
Read Dr. Hulda Clark.
Realistically, even mother's who don't intend to sleep with their infants often fall asleep while nursing and then wake up in the morning with the baby beside them. It is not an all or none proposition. There all sorts of compromises available such as co sleepers which attach to the bed. There are also known risk factors which make co sleeping dangerous. Obesity of parents, drug use, and smoking are good examples. Having crib rail pads, blankets, pillows, and other freely movable objects in a crib or bed are also risk factors. Infants can be dressed warmly without the necessity of bulky blankets. Hats are most important in retaining warmth in infants who have relatively large heads. No one is advocating letting an infant cry it out. Risk factors are not predictive of poor outcomes, but just like someone with high cholesterol, obesity, and hypertension is more likely to have a heart attack, we can identify many risk factors for SIDS. Again, there is no relationship between infant apnea and SIDS.
Please contact your local SIDS Foundation chapter for more information and don't depend on anonymous posting on internet blogs for your information.
Its funny I see no mention of the mandatory vaccinations that are given to our babies each year that are filled with so many toxic compounds its unreal and heartbreaking. If you knew what went into these vaccinations (including steralization drugs), you would never allow your babies to have these. I learned a little too late about the truth of vaccinations and flu shots, but I encourage ALL parents to do their homework on child vaccinations. There are also ways to go about opting out of mandatory vaccinations, and I this information was shared with me by my own physician. Many docs know about the realities of vaccinations, but whether the money they make off getting vaccinations done, or the false realities that these vaccinations will last a lifetime and never have a negative effect on our children, the proof is in the research...you only have to tell your doctor that your child has a severe allergic reaction to eggs, and the physician will have to sign a medical waiver allowing your child to attend schools, without being vaccinated. Also, if you baby does have an unknown allergic reaction to eggs, these vaccines WILL be extremely harmful to them as well...research research everyone, and not what the doctor hands you, find this information on your own, the drug compounds that are put in your child's vaccinations can be found right there on the CDC.gov website...look around and find the real information on why our children are being vaccinated...
Rarely have I seen a post filled with so much misinformation. YOU need to do your research. In point of fact, populations of infants who are vaccinated are less likely to die of SIDS. This is not an entirely fair comparison, because poverty, IGNORANCE, and other factors make the unvaccinated infant more at risk than the vaccinated one.
As for eggs, the only vaccine your child might get made with egg protein is the influenza vaccine. NONE of the other routine vaccines given in the U.S. have egg protein. Go back to your cave, you troglodyte.
In the early 60s my parents had a boy that died of SIDS. I was small and have no memory of it. My parents never recovered and both became alcoholics. This event changed the course of our family and is effecting me for the rest of my live, even though I don't even remember it. Because of this, when I had my children, they put them in the NICU and monitored them for apnea for 24 hours. (This was in the 80s). I am so grateful that my kids are all healthy. In the 80s, they were telling us to put them to sleep on their stomics and we always used a blanket. This may be one of those things that no one will ever know for sure.
Don't ignore the flame retardent chemicals used in all bedding and clothing. Please read the theories from these scientists (linked below). Buy organic crib mattresses and sleep well! Get these chemicals out of carseats, pack n plays etc...If you want babies to sleep on your adult bed - you must buy chemical free adult mattresses!
Dr. Jim Sprott of New Zealand has researched three toxic nerve gases found in crib mattresses – phospines made from phosphorus, arsines made from arsenic, and stibines made from antimony.