9) In the Dark

We never really received any more information about what happened from the detectives than what I was told when I arrived at the babysitter’s house – that he was found unresponsive during his nap.

Chris and I were both very comfortable with our daycare – Kelly was “mom-like”, very nurturing, and had older daughters that would come home from school and play with the kids. I liked that it wasn’t too structured and that the kids were able to play. I never questioned anything about the daycare; nothing worried me. So the thought never crossed my mind, that it was anything other than SIDS.

We all believed that SIDS was the cause of death; that was the information that the hospital was working with, and all we were told from the detectives was that there was not foul play involved, which eliminated any abuse concerns. It was the only thing that made sense based on the information we had. So we continued to take Taylee to the daycare afterwards – thinking it was SIDS, we couldn’t imagine how bad Kelly must have felt. So, we thought it was the right thing to do; she was practically family. Kelly and her family came to the hospital to see Weston and came to his celebration of life as well. She never mentioned anything differently, even though it was obvious that we didn’t know the whole story. That is one of things that disappoints me the most.

Almost a month after Weston had passed away, I received a phone call from the Coroner’s office. School had just gotten out and so, not thinking it would be anything other than confirmation of SIDS, I called her back. She informed me that she would be ruling Weston’s death as Sudden Unexplained Infant Death due to improper sleep conditions. WHAT? My world stopped, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. She said that the police report detailed that he had been found face down on an extremely soft full size bed. How could nobody tell us what had happened for a month!

I immediately called the detective, who was extremely apologetic – yet I still can’t help but be a little upset that he hadn’t called us immediately - and told me the whole story. Kelly had been putting Weston to sleep on her daughter’s bed, unknown to us. I thought he was sleeping in a little bassinet, but apparently that had not been happening. She had him swaddled tightly and put pillows around him so that he wouldn’t roll off, but he was only 3 months old, so he wasn’t rolling yet. Her daughter went in the room to change when she got home from schools and somehow, our best guess is that she sat on the end of the bed even though she says that she didn’t, moved the bed enough to roll him over. 

I was devastated. It was no longer that he just stopped breathing, that it wasn’t his time to be here; it was now that he had suffocated because our daycare provider chose not to listen to the most important rule of infant sleeping. No beds. My baby died because she decided to be lazy that day and not set up a pack n play.

I called Chris and told him what had happened, and it was like we started the grieving all over again. It was like we were back to square one on August 24^th. It was horrible. It was difficult because now there was someone to blame; it was somebody’s fault. That was difficult to deal with. More so since Chris and I had different emotions about it. Chris was really angry with Kelly and her decision - while she was not intentionally trying to hurt Weston, she knew that was not what she should be doing. I was just unbelievably disappointed; I never got mad - the angry just never showed up, which caused some tough feelings between Chris and me. We had to navigate through the grieving differently and try to understand and support each other in the process. Not that it was something that we couldn’t do; Chris and I have a very solid relationship and are each other’s biggest supports; we knew we would be okay – it just created more difficulty. After all of this, I feel like our relationship is made of diamonds.

Lesson #6