Experts are calling for more education on SIDS, which kills thousands of infants in America each year.
Your baby’s been crying for a couple of hours straight. You’ve bounced him, cuddled him, fed him, sung to him, changed him and wished you could trade him in for a different model, but you can’t seem to get a break.
Something’s up and no one knows what. And then, miraculously, just as quickly as he started all that immeasurable fuss, he’s fast asleep in your arms.
Well, was it some sort of new, contemporary dark magic that did it? Did a breeze from purple bewitched slumber fairies waft suddenly through your screen on this bless’d summer’s eve, or what?
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By this point, no one flippin’ cares. You’ll take it, witchery included. You put your child down in his crib with a well-earned sigh of relief, (and maybe a curse word or two or five), and walk out.
But did you put your baby to sleep on his front, or on his back?
For f*&k’s sake, if you’re me, the only thing that remains clear at this point is there’s some celebratory black forest cake sitting, waiting to be munched on for five minutes in the kitchen before you can actually, finally get your dreaded self to bed.
Blame Game
Of course you’re hoping your child is fast asleep on his back. Since back in the 1990’s, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced that babies should be placed on their backs in cribs so that they don’t die while sleeping, just about every parent is probably hoping this is what they did.
No one wants their child to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). But the reality is, this isn’t necessarily what’s happening.
Can we blame parents? No. Can we work towards change? Yes. Results from a nationally representative sample of U.S. mothers recently showed that fewer than half of infants in the U.S are always placed to sleep on their backs.
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Across the country, SIDS kills about four babies out of every 10,000 live births.
In 2015, there were about 3,700 sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUID) in the United States.
Since experts believe that education and getting the message across from doctors to parents is the answer, listen up doctors: please inform your new parents. Parents: act wisely.
As Dr. Michael Goodstein, a neonatologist for WellSpan York Hospital has stated, lives are at stake.
Photo credits: lucidwaters/Bigstock; Kattitude/Bigstock
