In one of our recent classes, the teacher talked for a while about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS.) I had heard it in passing before, but I didn’t know much about it. The SIDS website defines it this way:
SIDS is the sudden death of an infant under one year of age which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including performance of a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history.
I was surprised to find out that this is basically a catch-all answer for “we have no idea why your baby died.” Wow! In the year 2013, babies are still dying and science can’t figure out why. That’s incredible! All they can do is offer tips for things that seem to correlate with lower numbers of these deaths. A lot of these tips were discovered by studying cultures with higher than normal SIDS rates and understanding what’s different about their culture. Here are some things that lower the risk:
- SIDS occurs less when parents have babies after their teenage years and when they wait at least 1 year between the birth of a child and the next pregnancy.
- Infants should always sleep on their backs.
- They should sleep on a firm mattress in a crib with nothing but the baby (no pillows, no covers, no bumpers, no toys, etc.)
- Avoid exposure to tobacco smoke.
- Breast-fed babies have a lower risk of SIDS than formula-fed babies.
- Offer a pacifier to the baby.
It’s nice to know that there are things we can do to help lower the risk, and hopefully some day they’ll understand what causes this. It turns out that there is an adult version of this too, though it appears to be much less likely.
There is a deluge of product information available for a pregnant couple, and as a first time pregnant couple, we didn’t even know what types of things we should be buying, much less which specific brands and models we should look at. Rather than researching everything individually, we decided to pick one overall book and stick with it, for better or worse.
Today is a big day for Tyla. It’s her last full day of office work! Soon she’ll be starting her new job: full time Mom! Every couple makes their own decisions, but personally I’m not only thankful that my wife wants to stay home to raise our child but also that we’re in a position where that’s possible. She’s going to transition from dealing with a doctor’s office full of people who are a mix between fun and cranky to a child … who is probably the same. Thank you Tyla! You’re going to make an incredible mother.
While Tyla has been studiously reading through her baby name book over and over again taking notes, I’ve kept a simple text file on my computer and added names to it whenever I heard something I liked. Agreeing on something like this seemed like it would be pretty difficult so I refused to talk about it with her until we knew the sex and could cut the discussion in half. 
I’ve been doing this daily blogging thing for over 10 years now, and I often wonder what it would be like if my parents or grandparents had done something like this. Would I read it? Most likely I think I’d go back to read their thoughts on major world events and big changes in their lives. Actually, Grandma Martens does keep a daily journal and I’d be very interested in going back through that at some point.