The Alarming Numbers of Infant Deaths due to Unsafe Sleep

Everyday in the United States 12 babies die from being placed in an unsafe sleep environment. That equals to 4, 380 babies that die every year from unsafe sleep. 4,380 parents wake up to find their baby unresponsive, have to preform CPR, have a coroner come and investigate their home and figure out how and why the baby died. That is 4,380 coffins or cremations and 4, 380 parents who will live with a life of guilt, sorrow, what-if's, cherished memories, and empty dreams. 4,380 babies that will never grow up and it could have been prevented.


*Note: This does not include a SIDS death, but we will get to that a little later*


How can so many babies die without others being aware of this silent killer? Did you know the number was so high? Neither did I and I work to educate parents on creating a safe sleep environment for infants.  How can so many infants die everyday and yet we aren't doing all we can to educate parents and caregivers to reduce and eliminate these tragic numbers?


The recent news articles are alarming:

"Sleep mishaps leading cause of infant deaths"

~"The Stark County Child Fatality Review Board reviewed all deaths of Stark County children up to 17 years old since 2000.

Between 2000 and 2009, there were 50 sleep-related deaths. And 38 were the result of co-bedding with other people, according to Stark County Health Commissioner William Franks."

"Children Die as Dangers are Ignored"

~"In the last several years, dozens of Missouri families have dealt with unfathomable losses in the very places they were assured their babies' safety would come first: paid child care.

From 2007 through 2010, at least 45 children - most of them infants - died in child care for reasons other than existing illnesses."

"Many babies die from suffocation, not SIDS, study shows"

~"Coroners who carefully follow federal guidelines while probing the 4,000 unexpected infant deaths nationally each year are discovering a hard truth. Most of these babies are suffocating in completely avoidable accidents, a nine-month investigation by Scripps Howard News Service has found."

We are realizing that what we once thought was SIDS ( Sudden Unexplained Infant death) is actually SUID (Sudden Unexpected Infant Death). Many people these are one in the same but they aren't. A SIDS death is when an apparently healthy infant dies and after a complete death scene investigation and autopsy no cause of death can be found. A SUID death is usually when a baby died from a preventable or explained death like an unsafe sleep environment. 

When a baby dies depending on the state and county the death occurred in, usually a coroner or death scene investigation comes to the home and takes pictures of the death scene, reviews the death scene to try to find clues to what could have caused a baby to die suddenly and unexpectedly. Some times the answers are clear and other times there is nothing to indicate a reason a baby died. It is imperative that a complete and through death scene investigation is performed. Unfortunetly, often times a death scene is not being investigated properly. Depending who completes an infants death scene and who performs the autopsy depends on what the cause of death is determined to be on an autopsy and/or death certificate. You have some professionals who do not believe in SIDS and refuses to write it on an autopsy or death certificate even if nothing points to anything else. Now, let's talk about what a SIDS death is. A baby who dies of SIDS is placed in a safe sleep environment and nothing is in the way or in their sleep space that could interfere with their breathing. What does this mean exactly? Let's discuss what a safe sleep environment looks like and what isn't considered a safe sleep environment for an infant.


Safe Sleep Environment:


A baby should be sleeping in a new and safe crib that has not been recalled. Or a pack n play. 


*Bassinettes are not recommended because they are often padded and can restrict airflow. where a crib or pack n play either has mesh sides or crib slats they accommodate for good airflow to an infant.*


Parents should room share with their infant in their bedroom but NEVER share a bed with your baby or any other sleep surface. Babies who bed share are more likely to die than a baby who is placed to sleep in a crib.


Never place an infant to sleep on their stomach! Every sleep counts which means even for naps a baby should be placed on their back. 


Use a pacifier to help reduce the risk of SIDS and there is a study that says a fan can help circulate the air.


Although decorating a baby's crib looks nice it is not needed and can be deadly to an infant. Decorate their nursery but not their sleep safe. This means nothing in the crib except for a fitted sheet. No blankets, bumper pads, sleep positioners, toys/stuffed animals, as all of these have been linked to suffocation.


Use a Halo Sleep sack to keep the baby warm, or dress baby warmly in the colder months but prevent overheating. Dress your baby as you would dress yourself.

Unsafe Sleep Environment:

For more information on how to create a beautiful nursery without decorating the crib please visit:A face book page dedicated on keeping babies sleeping safely from the CJ Foundation of SIDS.


Sleep in safety,  grow in style

"Saving babies: Exposing sudden infant death in America"

This is a study from Scripps on infant deaths dating as far back as 1992. We are finding that many of the deaths that were once classified as SIDS an unpreventable and mysterious death, face book group PAUSE (Parents Against Unsafe Sleep Environments) was created to give parents and caregivers information they otherwise would not receive.


"In fact, we are getting further away from solving the mystery of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome because of sloppy procedures, manipulation of statistics, misguided efforts to protect the feelings of grieving parents, and deliberate attempts to make SIDS go away, at least on paper.

The Scripps review of 40,000 infant deaths going back to 1992 revealed that the quality of infant death investigations, the level of training for coroners, and the amount of oversight and review vary enormously across the country. In many cases, professional bias -- both for and against a diagnosis of SIDS -- trumps medical evidence.

As a result, the odds that an infant's death will be correctly diagnosed are often determined by geography rather than science. In other words, the same death might be called SIDS in one county and called something else just down the road."

"There's no rhyme or reason to what medical examiners are diagnosing as SIDS, suffocation, strangulation or undetermined," said Theresa Covington, director of the National Center for Child Death Review Policy and Practice at the University of Michigan. "The variability is across the country and within the states."

"If we had a standard approach to investigating and classifying these deaths, our approach to prevention and research could be a lot clearer," said Dr. James Kemp, a leading SIDS researcher at St. Louis University. "The whole reason for keeping count is to figure out how to avoid the next infant death."

Scripps conducted an extensive study into how infant deaths are investigated in the United States using records provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The records detail the sudden deaths of 40,239 infants, half of whom died in the 1990s and the rest in a five-year period from 2000 to 2004.

The records of the most recent infant deaths, from 2000 to 2004, can be examined in the first searchable database of its kind at www.scrippsnews.com/sids/database.

The review found enormous variation in how the deaths of infants are investigated and classified. The SIDS rate, according to the data, is 12 times higher in Mississippi than in New York. Most experts agree that the big differences are caused by how the deaths are classified, not by how the babies died.

Variations are sometimes even greater from county to county within a state because coroners take widely different approaches to how they determine the cause of infant deaths in their areas.

Federal records show a dramatic decline in reported cases of SIDS, dropping from 4,895 cases in 1992 to only 2,247 in 2004, the most recent year for which complete data is available.

The records examined by Scripps showed that cases of SIDS virtually disappeared in some states and cities over the last several years, but closer examination of the data makes it evident that thousands of those lives have not been "saved," but rather lost under another name.

Coroners and medical examiners said SIDS was responsible for nearly 80 percent of all sudden infant deaths 15 years ago and only 55 percent in 2004. What increased during this time were diagnoses that CDC statisticians labeled as "threats to breathing" and "other ill-defined causes of mortality."

Some researchers think that this "code shifting" of infant death causes has substantially overstated the success of public health efforts against SIDS. The diagnosis of SIDS has been replaced on death certificates by new and vague terms like "undetermined cause," "sudden and unexplained death" and "other ill-defined and unknown causes of mortality."

The result is that, while deaths attributed to SIDS are down, the overall number of sudden infant deaths has remained steady, and even ticked up in some years, since 2000.

Among the other findings of the Scripps investigation:

-- In some states and counties, investigators are told not to issue a SIDS diagnosis if any other cause is suspected, causing the rate at which the syndrome is reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to plummet to just a fraction of the national average. Several large metro areas reported no SIDS cases during the five-year period even though there were dozens of sudden infant deaths.

-- Other jurisdictions offer extra pay to coroners who fill out complex medical forms detailing the circumstances of sudden unexplained infant deaths. Some have reported as much as a 55 percent increase in SIDS deaths since the incentives began.

-- The variance in diagnoses can be equally great within the same state, so that one county is diagnosing SIDS at three or even four times the rate of its neighboring counties.

-- States with local and state boards assigned to review the evidence in mysterious infant deaths are three times more likely to identify children who have died from suffocation or smothering than do states with little or no oversight in child deaths.

-- The 28 states that have statewide medical examiners are more likely to diagnose SIDS deaths than the 22 states without a top medical examiner.

-- States that mostly rely upon appointed, well-trained medical examiners to investigate infant deaths issue 10 percent more SIDS diagnoses than states that elect often less-well-trained coroners, many of whom are not required to have college degrees.

-- Coroners, who generally are not required to be doctors or even have any medical background, were 37 percent more likely than medical examiners to issue a diagnosis of "undetermined causes" on the death certificates of infants.

Also I want to leave you with something that Deborah Robinson said. She is a death scene investigator in Seattle, Washington.

"I've been reading some of the posts regarding SIDS, Suffocation, Overlay and what they can and cant tell from the autopsy. Rarely can the distinction be made purely by the autopsy. It is critical that the coroner or medical examiner take into consideration the entire death scene when making their certification. Some mechanical suffocation such as wedging can be identified but for the most part, the autopsy is benign, which is why so many question regarding how your baby was placed and how your baby was found are asked. I'm not sure everyone also understands the difference between a Medical Examiner and Coroner. ME is a forensic pathologist who is board certified. A coroner is an elected official. In our state which is similar to most, the only requirement to be a coroner is to be over the age of 18, a resident of the county you are running in and pay your filing fee. They typically will contract with someone to perform an autopsy if warranted."




Every person needs to take a stand and educate yourselves on how to create a safe sleep environment, and pass on this information to anyone who has or cares for infants. Imagine if everyone was not only educated and practiced these guidelines how the number of infant deaths would dramatically decrease. I would also like to note that SIDS is a real problem and diagnose but too often babies are dying from a preventable death and the parents are not being told. This isn't SIDS vs. SUID it is about reducing the numbers of all infant deaths regardless of the cause. if you have any questions please feel free to comment or contact me directly at pausesafesleep@gmail.com