Each year about 37 babies and toddlers die when they are accidentally left strapped in car safety seats or become trapped in vehicles that rapidly heat up.
If you think this senseless tragedy couldn't happen to you, think again.
Mary Parks and her husband, Jeff, had everything they wanted: a comfortable house in Blacksburg, Virginia; well-paying jobs (Parks was an accountant, Jeff a research scientist); and two darling boys adopted as babies from Guatemala. The end of August and start of September 2007 had been stressful, though. Twenty-three-month-old Juan and his 4-year-old brother, Byron, had both been sick on and off. Parks' days had been blurs of work, day care, doctors, business trips, visits with relatives, and anxiety. On September 7, after attending to a feverish Byron the night before, she left him home to recuperate with Jeff. Her plan was to drive Juan to day care on her way to work.
Rarely had Parks taken just one boy to day care. Rarely had she gone to work at all if one boy was sick -- but this time she and Jeff agreed to swap roles. Moments after she started driving, Parks says, she realized Juan had fallen asleep. It was the last time that morning that she would remember he was in the car. "We were no longer taking anything of his to day care -- we were beyond diaper bags," she says. So there was no baby gear in the front seat to remind her. She caught no glimpse of him in the rear view mirror, either; in his car seat, Juan was too short to spot easily. Most important, perhaps, Byron wasn't there, chattering away. "He never fell asleep in the car," Parks explains.
Blog: Don't leave your child in your car
Instead of stopping at the day care center, she drove right to work. Parks grabbed her purse from the front seat, went into her office, and had "a normal day." Talked with her supervisor. Ate lunch at her desk. Called Jeff to see how Byron was doing. She even remembers telling colleagues that -- since Juan had been sick, too -- she might have to leave early if a call came from day care to get him. In her mind, that's exactly where he was.
After work, Parks drove to the supermarket, shopped for dinner, and continued on to the day care center to pick Juan up -- unaware that he was already sitting right behind her. When she arrived, his teacher asked, "Was Juan out sick today?"
"No," said Parks. "I brought him this morning."
"He wasn't here today," the teacher said.
Within moments, Parks recalls, "a light in my head went on. I took off running toward the car. My heart was already in my feet because I knew how hot it had been that day. I got to the car, jerked open the door, and saw him. I reached over to him. I remember screaming at him, 'Juan! Juan! You've got to wake up!'" Cradling her son's body -- stiff and still as a baby doll's -- Parks ran inside the day care office. One staffer tried desperately to revive Juan with CPR; another called 911. "I went in crying for help," Parks says, "but I knew he was dead."
A heart-wrenching epidemic
What happened to Juan that day -- death by hypothermia, caused when the body's temperature rises uncontrollably -- has happened to about 450 children in the United States since 1998. "It's reasonable to call this an epidemic," says memory expert David Diamond, Ph.D., a scientist at the Veterans' Hospital in Tampa, Florida, who is often consulted on such cases. "It happens, on average, once a week from spring to early fall." Babies and young children are not able to regulate their body temperatures well -- warming at a rate three to five times faster than an adult -- especially in a car, where the windows create a greenhouse effect. In just half an hour, a car's interior can get 35 degrees hotter. Depending on such factors as what color he's wearing and when he last drank something, an infant might die of hypothermia in just 15 minutes on a 75-degree day. Cooler weather is no guarantee of safety, either. Overly bundled babies -- warmly dressed and blanketed in their car seats -- have been known to succumb when outdoor temps were in the 60s or even 50s. And despite popular belief, cracking open a window does little good. That tiny bit of air can't begin to offset the heat that is absorbed by a car's seats, dashboard, and walls.
Parenting.com: The safety mistakes even good moms make
Some children are knowingly and negligently left inside hot vehicles while their parents do errands. Other kids climb inside their parents' parked cars and become trapped. But most, like Juan Parks, are victims of adults' disastrous lapses in memory. "Given the right scenario, I would say this can happen to anyone," says Diamond. "It has nothing to do with how much parents love their kids. It is, to me, a tragic way of learning how the brain works."
Each of us has dueling memory systems, Diamond explains. The first -- in the primitive, "reptilian" part of the brain -- directs our habits. It's the system that lets you drive home from work without thinking consciously about every turn. The second system -- located in more advanced brain regions -- is responsible for short-term plans, such as "Buy milk on the way home." And as anyone who has ever forgotten that milk knows, the primitive "habit system" is much more powerful. "It's very difficult to keep in your mind that you want to override your habit system," Diamond says. "And it can take over almost immediately."..........
See CNNCar Safety for the full article.
We would love to hear if you have any suggestions on how to remind yourself your kids are in the car. (ie. keeping your purse or diaper bag in the front seat. ) Thanks again to Holly, and please, if you come across anything mom, baby, family related and want to share it with other moms email us at jennieandkim@gmail.com and we will post it!
