6160 week 2

The topic I chose is SIDS. After I had my daughter I was worried the most about SIDS. Sudden infant death syndrome can affect any child under the age of 12 months, male or female, healthy or otherwise. Researchers can now conclude that SIDS may be caused by the baby's bodies inability to detect high level of carbon dioxide in the blood, as well as sleep arousal difficulty. There are other factors that increase the risk of SIDS such as laying a baby on their stomach to sleep, co-sleeping, cigarette smoke, soft bedding, and multiple births. The two main factors that increase the risk of SIDS that stood out to me is being born to a teen mother and living in a poverty situation. I work with teen mothers living in poverty everyday, so this information came as a shock to me. I was 20 years old when I had my daughter and live in a great environment and I was worried sick, so for teen mothers I can't imagine how worried they would get if they knew that they were placing their babies at risk.

While the United States has had approximately 544,000 cases of SIDS so far, China has had approximately 2 million. These numbers are disturbing and mind blowing; it struck a curiosity in me to research why China has so many deaths due to SIDS. I tried to search the internet for more information but other than numbers, there was not a lot to go on. I came to the conclusion that since China is industrialized and modernized like the United States, their statistics should be similar. Since China's SIDS cases are extremely high, I think that it may be due to their large population, and their higher birth rates. This is obviously a topic that could use more exploration by researchers.

The lack of resources for my topic just goes to show how important our role as educators and advocates really is. We need to be informed and share information; educators in other regions should do the same.