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Bristow mom reaches out to families of SIDS victims
Maggie Hansford knows the pain of losing a child. In January 2009, her three-month-old daughter, Ellie, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.Now, the Bristow mom is trying to help other parents and siblings who are going through the same loss.
“There's a lack of support for the families but little to no support for the siblings,” she said.
That's why Hansford and her family have started Two Tiny Hands, a nonprofit foundation to support the parents and siblings of babies who have died.
On Saturday, June 26, the group will hold a launch party from 1 to 4 p.m. at 10845 Henry Abbot Road in Bristow. The event will include a moonbounce, snow cones, popcorn and entertainment plus literature and information about SIDS.
The $5 suggested donation will help to build the nonprofit organization.
According to the Mayo Clinic, SIDS is “the unexpected, sudden death of a child under age 1 in which an autopsy does not show an explainable cause of death.”
The problem, said Hansford, is that because SIDS is unexplainable, not all deaths are labeled as SIDS. Her own daughter, she said, didn't officially die of SIDS but of an “undetermined cause.”
That's making it harder for parents to connect with other families going through the same thing.
Hansford said she joined a support group that meets in McLean and noticed that most of the other parents also had children who didn't officially die of SIDS.
“There's a lot more parents out there that are faced with the loss of a child than people are aware of,” she said.
And they're not all what you'd think.
Hansford said her family doesn't fit the description of high-risk for SIDS. The cause of SIDS isn't known but the rates are higher in babies exposed to cigarette smoke, who have teenage mothers, got little prenatal care, were born premature or who live in poverty.
Most of all, it's higher for babies who sleep on soft mattresses, with blankets or in otherwise unsafe conditions. The rate of SIDS has dropped dramatically since the early 1990s, when doctors started telling parents that babies should sleep on their backs, not on their stomachs.
None of those risk factors fit in Hansford's case.
“You think you put your child on their back to sleep and everything will be okay. That's not necessarily the case,” she said.
But Hansford is less focused now on her own tragedy than on helping other families. With the help of her husband Rick and sons Sebastian (4) and Oliver (4 months), plus a multitude of friends and other group members, Hansford is planning the June 26 party to officially launch Two Tiny Hands.
The organization, which is about 10 families strong, will provide care packages to families who have lost a child.
For the adults, the care packages will include a list of online resources plus support books. Part of the group's fundraising goal is to be able to create a loaner library for the books -- Hansford said she's already loaned out all of her own.
“You can read the book once or twice but then you don't really need it anymore,” she explained.
Hansford and her fellow group members will also be putting together a canvas photo collage or a photo blanket with pictures of the baby to give to the grieving parents. She said she treasures her own pictures of Ellie and wishes she could have just one more.
For the siblings, the care packages will include stuffed animals, blankets and cards that were donated and made by other kids who have also lost a brother or sister.
Two Tiny Hands is also planning “snuggle parties,” for children who are going through a loss. At the parties, the children will bring stuffed animals to donate and they'll make cards for other children, but they'll also get a chance to play and to talk and to hear a story about life.
Hansford said she saw books about loss that were aimed at children but she felt that they were too complex for her now-4-year-old son Sebastian. So she wrote her own story, called “Big Life, Little Life.” The story focuses not on the sadness of loss, but on the happiness of having someone new, even if they were only here for a short time.
“Life exists all around us and some people have little lives and some people have big lives,” she said. “We should be grateful for the lives all around us.”
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