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Our SA-SIDS' Grief Support Forum Moderator's Story and why she wishes to support others. ~ Stacey

Carson was our first child. We got pregnant so fast; it was all a whirlwind. I took 3 months off work. On my first day back to work, my life changed forever. At 11am that morning, as I was trying to call the sitter to check on my daughter, she was on the phone with 911, telling them she wasn't breathing. She had put her down for a nap on her side (I always had her on her back) in an old pack and play. It was her first nap at the sitters house, on her first day. I have found out since that this is more common than you would think.

Our emergency room story is much like other people's emergency room stories: rushed into a secluded room, people coming in to talk to us, to prepare us for what was to come, finally the ER doctor telling us they had done what they could. We were in shock. I remember not wanting to see her and the hospital social worker telling me I had to. I held her and looked at her little fingers and wished so badly to hear her cry, to see her ball up her fist around my pinky like she always did.

We left the hospital and went home without our daughter. It was not natural. I remember hoping the autopsy results would show something, anything. That they would give me a reason that she died. I was trying so hard to understand, to make some sense of something that was senseless. But, autopsy results showed nothing abnormal, which means, it was a SIDS death.

We were told to wait to have more children by our parents, clergy, friends, others who have been through it - but we had no desire to wait. We were ready to be parents. We didn't want to wait to be parents again. We were pregnant 2 weeks after her death, and had a healthy baby girl 13 months after the birth of Carson. She saved our lives, and I am forever grateful for her. We called her our healing baby. We never tried to replace Carson, but Annah gave us the chance to be parents again, and orient our lives toward the future, instead of the past.

This was almost 9 years ago. We have since had another daughter, Haidyn, who is now three. She is a joy and both girls are happy and healthy. Our lives seem now to be about the "normal" things that parents do, knowing we will never be able to do them completely "normally". Like "normal" parents we still get frustrated with our kids, and sometimes yell. At other times, we watch our girls playing or laying on the couch together, and feel so lucky to have them. Even more so than we ever would have if we didn't know they could be taken from us.

I have spent years trying to find "answers" to this. I have read and searched to define my new spirituality. I have spent time dwelling to the point I couldn't think about anything else. At other times, I go through periods of not wanting to think about it for a while. I do not want to be defined by this one event of my life.

Helping others go through the process of grief is something I know I have to do. The only people I wanted to talk to after my daughter died is other people who had been there, been through it, and come out on the other side. I needed to know there was happiness again in my future. I am happy to say to you - there IS happiness again. Stacey Morgan, 11.2007