Shock Value

Colin,

There is a campaign in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that sure has stirred up a lot of commotion among the internet crowd. It shows posters of infants sleeping next to butcher knives, drawing the correlation that not following that safe sleep practices defined on their site is akin to sleeping with a sharp knife. Daddy has no real problems with this type of shock advertising as it does get people talking about uncomfortable subjects such as infant death. However, the message that SIDS is somehow associated with any of this is still frustrating and annoying. When will the medical community and the media start making and reporting clear delineations between SIDS and suffocation?

If you co-sleep and roll over on your baby, the baby suffocates. If you co-sleep and your baby stops breathing for no apparent reason and then can not be revived and no cause of death can be discerned...it is SIDS. It really is not that difficult a concept to grasp. Autopsies shown very distinct signs of suffocation, so if the ad would be more targeted or they removed the SIDS label, maybe it would be a more effective message. However, and I am not going to debate co-sleeping (there are enough sites that do that and show statistics for and against), the awareness has still been raised and people are talking about SIDS and ways to possibly prevent it...so, even though Daddy finds the message muddled, he thinks that any awareness and discussion is better than none.

I love you!
Daddy