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Mother’s worst nightmare realised

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When Liz Willcox put baby Jasmyn down to sleep one night in 2017, there were no signs to suggest that it would be the last time she would see her baby alive.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But the next morning, the mother-of-three woke to find her worst nightmare realised.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The little girl had died in the night, at only five months and one week old.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I looked at the baby monitor and saw how still she was,” she told 7NEWS.com.au.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I just started grabbing her and she was cold and lifeless,” the mother continued.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I alerted my husband Ben, we called an ambulance and he started performing CPR.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“But I just shut down.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The coroner determined Jasmyn was an “an extremely healthy baby” and there was “no reason for her death”.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">That’s when Liz found out about SIDS.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sudden Infant Death Syndrome - or SIDS - is the sudden, unexpected death of a child younger than one year old while they sleep.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though the exact cause is unknown, Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Rita Machaalani says a baby dies suddenly every second day in Australia.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“No one can comprehend how a healthy baby put to sleep can be found dead the next morning,” she said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“A ‘stigma’ usually surrounds the parent that they must have done something, but that’s far from the truth.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Often, she says, a coroner will list the baby’s death as “undetermined”, which means that more children might be dying from the syndrome than officially reported.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">After Jasmyn’s passing, Liz was contacted by a charity group called River’s Gift.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The group was established in 2011 by Alex Hamilton and Karl Waddell after their son, River, died in his sleep at only 128 days old.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Liz can only hope other parents who face the same experience can get help quickly.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“You’ll love to get a hold of them earlier. There needs to be something to get charities in touch with them earlier,” she said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I think for us, you never want to plan your child’s funeral. It starts here.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">She and Ben are now preparing a legacy in honour of Jasmyn called </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/unitingforjasmyn/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Uniting for Jasmyn</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The couple also held a gala in conjunction with River’s Gift in 2019.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The second gala, postponed from last year due to COVID, will be held this year on July 10, almost four years to the say since Jasmyn passed away in Eaton’s Hill.</span></p>

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“His eyes were open, but he wasn’t there”: Mother recounts baby loss

<p>Lindsay Paulsen was on her way back from work when she noticed a missed call from her son Declan’s daycare centre.</p> <p>The American mum thought her 11-months-old baby had a runny nose or bumped his head – but when she called back, she was instead “greeted with the worst words of my life”.</p> <p>“‘Declan was taking a nap and didn’t wake up’, his carer told me,” Lindsay wrote in a piece on <em><a href="https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/my-son-went-to-daycare-and-never-came-home-a-mums-heartbreaking-story-c-1118066">7News</a></em>.</p> <p>Lindsay, who was pregnant, called her husband Cody and rushed to the hospital where Declan was being taken to.</p> <p>“I tried to talk myself down. Declan would be fine. I was pregnant and the hormones must be making me dramatic.”</p> <p>When she arrived at the hospital, Cody was kneeling on the floor outside the emergency room while Declan was “surrounded by a dozen doctors and nurses trying to start his heart”.</p> <p>She sat in a chair waiting as her husband paced and yelled, “Come on buddy, come on.”</p> <p>Finally, a doctor came up to deliver the harrowing news.</p> <p>“‘I’m sorry we did everything we could’ was all the doctor could say, like some line from a movie,” Lindsay wrote.</p> <p>The shock and grief didn’t hit her until the medical staff stopped their resuscitation efforts, wrapped Declan in a sheet and put him in her arms.</p> <p>“His eyes were open, but he wasn’t there,” she wrote.</p> <p>“That sparkle that made him ‘him’, was gone.</p> <p>“I cried all over my boy and, at the same time, I was trying to memorise every inch of his face, the weight of him in my arms.”</p> <p>Lindsay was later told her son experienced sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS.</p> <p>“I found out later SIDS is most likely during a child’s first year,” she wrote. “Declan was just weeks away from that milestone.”</p> <p>That day – March 19, 2018 – marked the last time she saw and held her son.</p> <p>Years after Declan’s death, Lindsay still speaks of him as an active member of her family.</p> <p>“I gladly take the uncomfortable silence and looks I get when a stranger asks me how many kids I have and I mention my son Declan,” she wrote on <em><a href="https://www.lovewhatmatters.com/i-received-a-missed-call-from-daycare-declan-was-taking-a-nap-and-never-woke-up-sids-grief-loss-healing/">Love What Matters</a></em>.</p> <p>“I know my answer is not typical because young people don’t die. Babies shouldn’t die, but they do, and if there was more acceptance of ‘the bad stuff’ in life, mothers like me wouldn’t feel so isolated.”</p>

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