Resources and Research

Hi everyone! October is SIDS awareness month and is so very important to myself, my husband and our families to share information about SIDS and SIDS research. We need to find a cure! [edit: ‘finding a cure’ doesn’t seem like the right terminology since the cause is still unknown. Maybe we should say, find a cause?] If you live in Eastern Washington or Idaho our non-profit that provides grief support and education is Inland Northwest SIDS/SUID Foundation. Just a few weeks ago they held their annual Run for the Angels and Family Fun day in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Our family and close friends showed up to support us and our Grey. It was a beautiful day and a great way to raise awareness and needed funding for a vital foundation. This was their 4th annual run, if you live in the area look for it next year, it will always be held in October. The foundation does an amazing job of honoring our babies and making it a fun event for the whole family with coffee and food on site, music, a silent auction, face painting, bouncy castles and a 5k run.

Part of Team Grey, we are so thankful for you.

Balloon release for our angels, “somewhere over the rainbow blue birds fly”

Another local foundation for SIDS is in Seattle, the Aaron Matthew SIDS Research Guild of Seattle Children’s Hospital, and it is absolutely amazing. They are funding crucial research to figuring out why our babies go to sleep and not wake up. They are using the power of technology from Microsoft data scientists and partnering with amazing doctors at Seattle Children’s Hospital (as well as other hospitals from across the country) to work on this mystery. They posted on their site this important and sad fact, “there has been little to no improvement in the rate of death since the mid-90’s. SIDS strikes without warning and leaves few clues about its cause. The causes are unknown.” A current campaign, First Steps for SIDS, runs through January 1st 2019 and you can donate as little as $5 and every dollar raised will be matched up to $100K. Just think, if every person following me on Instagram donated $5 we could raise $2,635 and that would be doubled by the match, wow! All proceeds go towards research. If you came across this blog after January 2019 and you want to donate to Seattle Children’s Hospital SIDS research you can go to their site and donate at any time, all links are shared below.

A SIDS mom that I have met shared with me the important work she is doing on the East Coast to raise awarness and dollars via her non-profit she created for her son, Knox Blocks. She fights for our babies daily and has been in contact with Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical as they are also working on unlocking the mystery. She shared this important and shocking information, “What we do know is that SIDS kills more babies between the ages of 0-12 months old in ONE YEAR than cancer kills children between the ages of 0-19 yrs old in one year. Reread that sentence and let it sink in.”

Funding is critical and every dollar counts because it truly is more than safe sleep! Here are some links for research and support.