What is SIDS?

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.

In a typical situation parents check on their supposedly sleeping infant to find him or her to have passed. This is the worse tragedy parents can face, a tragedy which leaves them with a sadness and a feeling of vulnerability that lasts throughout their lives.

SIDS is considered to be an almost instantaneous event. Babies do not cry out and often show no sign of having been disturbed in their sleep. Parents who have witnessed their baby’s death have reported that they appeared to die very peacefully in their sleep, that they appeared simply to stop breathing.

The reality of a SIDS death, however, is that they did not just stop breathing – their entire body shuts down in an instant, making it impossible to revive these babies even if immediate intervention is made.  While scary and hard to understand, this can be of some comfort to those that struggle with feelings of guilt for not being there when the baby died.