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A
personal letter from Mary Sturges of MOMYS.com regarding SIDS and
the "Back-to-Sleep" campaign.
I am including it here with her permission in hopes of providing
some help for mama's of infants and
encouragement to those who have a similar experience to Mary's. It
is with thanks to her that I share with you...
February
20, 2001
"Dear MOMYS,
Hang on; this is long. I hope it is worth reading. Tina
asked whether anyone had statistics on whether Back to Sleep has
actually decreased SIDS deaths. I do. Throughout the 1980’s, before
back-to-sleep and during the days of doctors advising all babies to
tummy-sleep, incidence of SIDS in America was 1.4-1.5 per 1000 – in
other words, about 1 in 750. With the advent of aggressive
back-to-sleep "propagandizing," it has gradually and steadily gone
down—the latest confirmed statistic I have is 1997, when there were
.64 deaths per 1000 or about one in 1500 -- less than HALF of the
number of deaths before back-to-sleep.
Is back-to-sleep responsible for the entire reduction? It’s hard to
say; not much else has changed, though, which would argue strongly
for back-sleeping being causative. Additionally, there are studies
indicating a dramatic drop in the SIDS rate in a region after that
region has been aggressively "propagandized." (A notable study is
one in Washington State a few years back, where the newspaper ran a
feature on back-to-sleep and the entire subscription area saw a
dramatic, 20-month decrease in SIDS deaths, *in the counties which
received that paper.* Numbers in the counties NOT receiving that
paper remained the same. This would be hard to explain any other
way.)
I
have something better than statistics, though, because when it’s
you, the statistic is 100%, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. I
have been up much of the night, last night, mentally composing
letters of various tone on this topic, most of which would be
unacceptable to actually send in, due to their snideness. It is very
difficult for me to write civilly on this topic because I get really
upset about peoples’ cavalier attitudes toward something that stole
my baby from me.
I
will attempt to summarize some of my thoughts without the nastiness.
Let me start with Tina’s suggested format for emotional topics: In
our house, we put our babies to sleep on their backs, because at one
point in our parenting career, we did not, and when we went to get
our little three-month-old son one morning when he overslept his
feeding, we found him cold and stiff and not breathing, and my
husband had to scream into the phone, "Send an ambulance! I think my
son is dead!" and we tried to resuscitate him ourselves while the
ambulance screamed down the block, except I couldn’t hardly get a
chest rise when I breathed for him because his lungs were badly
backed up with fluid (a death thing), and when the paramedics
arrived they took one look at him and sort of shook their heads, but
they tried to intubate him anyhow except they couldn’t because rigor
mortis had already set in (in no more than four hours) and they
couldn’t get the tube down his throat. So they fiddled around with
him down at the ambulance, not even bothering to put in an IV
because he was so obviously gone, and I guess drawing straws about
who was going to be the unlucky guy to come tell us our baby was
dead; and meanwhile a nice cop sat in our living room and babysat us
while a houseful of other cops, and the coroner, conducted a quick
murder investigation (required in these instances; nothing personal,
ma’am, we’re very sorry) and walked around peering in the fridge and
cupboards and going through the trash and looking through the
bookcase and closets and taking pictures of "the scene" for their
investigation. Meanwhile I sat on the floor with my husband and all
I can remember are lots and lots of big black shoes walking past me,
around my apartment, judging my parenting by the content of my
bookcase and fridge, and assessing the likelihood that I killed my
own child so they’d know whether it was OK to leave me there with
the other two (who were downstairs with a nice, but horrified,
neighbor who had a baby exactly my son’s age).
In our home, we put our babies to sleep on their backs because at
one point in our parenting career, we didn’t, and I got to hear the
words "I’m sorry; he is gone, there is nothing we can do" from a
paramedic who genuinely *looked* really sorry, in fact, he looked
miserable; and I remember sinking to my knees in despair in the
grass outside my apartment with neighbors quietly peeking through
the blinds wondering what all the racket was about; and then I got
to go upstairs and hold my little dead baby, who was a lot heavier
dead than he was when he was alive, and I held his little hand which
was clenched up tight in death and look at his sweet little face for
about thirty minutes until the coroner finished with everything she
had to do in our apartment (which at one point, included going into
our bedroom with our son and locking the door). He was wrapped up in
a quilt that a friend of his grandmother’s made especially for him,
and which Jim still can hardly stand to look at.
In our home, we put our babies to sleep on their backs, because
after the coroner was done, she had other places she had to go and
couldn’t wait on *me* all day, so she told me, "OK, it’s time to go,
I can’t wait any longer," and I had to hand him to one of her people
so he could be wrapped up in white plastic and taken away from our
house forever to go be autopsied (required), and then I had to wait
weeks and weeks for the autopsy report, and when it came it had
gruesome details like the weight of his kidneys and brain and stuff
like that, which left nothing to my imagination about what they had
done to him or how they had done it (those reports are nothing if
not thorough; gotta hand *that* to them), but the report really
didn’t tell me anything about how he had died, in fact it said
something like "perfectly healthy, well-nourished dead baby;
apparent SIDS episode."
In our home, we put our babies to sleep on their backs because for
months afterward, every time I heard a siren I would experience a
horrible surge of adrenaline leaving me cold and shaky and in tears,
and the same thing still happens to me whenever Jim or Ethan raise
their voice in alarm or whenever I hear Ethan’s footsteps running
toward my room, and in fact I will still usually burst into
hysterical tears when this happens, causing the offending party to
have to apologize all over himself; and because it was probably 18
months before Jim and I would wake up several times a night to
listen for the other one’s breathing, and shaking the other person
if we didn’t hear them immediately, because after all, if our baby
could die so suddenly, it seemed natural that our spouse would
probably die on us too, and the thought of finding them dead in our
bed was a consuming one.
In our home, we will always place our babies to sleep on their
backs, even though they look uncomfortable, even though they sleep
more lightly (actually, that’s one of the reasons Back-to-Sleep
*works*), even though it means more work for Mommy, even though
everyone we know was a tummy sleeper, ourselves and our first two
children included—because after our son was dead and we had
scattered his ashes (there weren’t many) on Monterey Bay, we did a
lot of reading about back sleeping and how much it has reduced the
incidence of SIDS in this country and abroad, and I had to do a lot
of repenting, because I had *known* this but didn’t really believe
it, and didn’t think our family was at risk, and I knew my son slept
better on his tummy and I was SO tired and needed sleep that I was
willing to gamble his life. And I did gamble, and I lost. I lost big
time.
I
have always been amazed at the low incidence of SIDS on MOMYS; the
whole time I moderated this list, I only knew of two other families
that had lost babies, and they each had lost one (although the
chance of losing a subsequent goes WAY up after you lose one, so we
get to live with *that* now too). You gals have been lucky; probably
breastfeeding has had a lot to do with the low incidence here on
MOMYS. I am distressed, though, by the tone and content of most of
the letters that were posted. Much of the anti-back-to-sleep
rhetoric I have heard over the past two weeks on this list has been
very foolish and anecdotal. Please do not build your houses upon the
sand. I realize that some percentage of you are types that simply
like to argue, or who "have it in" for Western medicine for some
reason, and that arguing with you about this is going to be like
trying to read a newspaper in a high wind. A certain percentage of
the population is never going to use seat belts, for example,
because you’re just SURE you’d be safer is you were "thrown free of
the wreck." <sigh> Additionally, many letters posted on this topic
had a definite feeling of smugness. I was smug, too, before my baby
died. I want you to realize that what you are doing is attempting to
cheat the odds. I’m glad that none of you have lost a tummy-sleeping
baby to SIDS, but I warn you strongly against taking that to mean
that back-sleeping is not protective or more importantly, that one
day, back-sleeping will not make the difference for one of your
babies. The evidence is clear that, although we don’t know *exactly*
why, it does lower the rate of SIDS by about half, to place a baby
on his back to sleep. For the rest of my life, I get to live with
the knowledge that I knew of something I could do to reduce the
chance that my baby would die, and I didn’t do it, and then he DID
die. The things I wrote above only begin to touch on the agony our
family lived through when we lost our son—most of it is too obscene
to write about here; I’ll take enough heat for this letter as it is,
I am sure -- and I will live forever with the knowledge that my smug
complacency ("it couldn’t happen to me") was contributory toward his
death and the pain that we, our children, and our friends and family
went through. If you place your child to sleep on his tummy to
sleep without some very good medical reason (like true reflux), do
so with the knowledge that if he dies, you, too, *will* live with
this guilt forever.
Understand that "well, WE were tummy babies, and WE lived" makes
about as much sense as arguing that WE rode around without car
seats, so our children shouldn’t need them either. Barber-surgeons
used to *bleed* people who were sick, thinking it would cure them;
medical science has advanced. Another one of those advances is the
understanding that placing babies to sleep on their backs somehow
reduces the incidence of sudden, unexplained infant death. The fact
that this discovery was made halfway through your childbearing years
does not invalidate it. Truth is truth, no matter *when* it comes to
light. You who know me, know that I do not stand behind everything
medical science has suggested (or commanded!) -- for example, we
selectively vaccinate. But you can bet that I stand behind THIS one,
because the statistics are clear. (Well, for that matter, I
selectively vaccinate because the statistic are clear on *that,*
too, but that’s another post.)
I
am somewhat sorry for the graphic tone of this letter, but for
people who can’t hear, you shout. And the posts over the past week
have demonstrated that some people aren’t hearing. Please do not
write me letters about how it was such a downer to read my post. If
you think it was hard to read, imagine living it. *I* do not want
you to live it; that’s why I wrote this. It wasn’t much fun to
write. Remember that I do not get a commission on back-sleeping
babies. I am going through all these rotten memories *only* to try
to convince you that SIDS is, too, a real danger, and that
back-sleeping does, too, decrease its incidence—by probably close to
half.
I
have *purposely* not touched on doctrine or theology in this post,
but be assured that I can serve *that* up by the shovelful to you
also if necessary, and nothing in my theology (which includes God’s
sovereign hand) excuses negligence on the part of parents to protect
their children from known dangers. I’m sorry if you find that
strongly-worded, but think about it—what if you drove around holding
your infant in your lap, rather than placing him in a car seat, when
car seats are proven to improve the chances of crash survival?
Back-sleeping is *the same.* Back-sleeping does not *guarantee*
survival any more than car seats do but it certainly does decrease
your child’s chances of dying like my son did. Anyway, back to
doctrine and theology—it is not the place of this post to discuss
whether God was directly responsible for my son’s death, or whether
I am a better Christian now because of it, or whatever. I am
strictly trying to make a case for being as responsible with our
children as possible—and I think any Bible believer’s theology would
support that. Certainly no one here thinks God would be well-pleased
if we all threw out our car seats, because they imply a lack of
faith in Him?! Understand that your children are your
responsibility, and I cannot dictate what you do with them (thank
goodness) but I certainly need to know that I have done everything
in my power to persuade you to make INFORMED choices regarding your
family. Please do not rely on foolish, faulty, wishful reasoning to
protect your beloved infants. Love to your precious families,
Mary Sturges
mom of Ethan, Jase, Simon, Quinn, Mamie, Kathleen—and Homer."
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