UPDATE, 7/10/2017: Nearly a week after losing her 7-month-old son Sloan, after he got tangled in his crib blanket, mom Jordan DeRosier spoke to People about the tragic accident. "I have a lot of guilt. What could I have done better? Could I have saved him? I will never be able to shake the feeling that there was something more I could have done to prevent his death," DeRosier said. 
 
 DeRosier made Sloan's cause of death public in a Facebook post, which has since been deleted, with hopes that it would shed light on the dangers of crib blankets. "That's really the only thing giving us comfort right now. We've gotten thousands of messages from parents saying that after reading about our story, they took blankets out of cribs." 
 
 But she has also received negative reactions, and has now made her Facebook private. "More and more people started to say hateful, hurtful things," she wrote in her latest post. "I started getting messages and comments that made me physically sick to read. It is so unfortunate that people think grief should fit their guidelines, that because my child died I cannot talk about him. My son's life mattered. His story matters." 
 
 ORIGINAL, 7/6/2017: After a tragic accident, one grieving mom is opening up about the dangers of having blankets and other objects in a young child's crib. 
 
 Washington mom Jordan DeRosier took to social media to express her emptiness after she suddenly lost her seven-month-old Sloan on July 3. While she originally refrained from posting the cause of death, she shared her heart-wrenching experience after critics began blaming vaccines; Sloan had passed away after getting caught in his blanket overnight. 
 
 "I had not wanted to explain the detailed circumstances of his death because of my guilt and the fear of condemnation from others. But I will not allow anyone to try and place blame where it does not belong," she wrote in a Facebook post that has since been deleted. 
 
 "He was last laid down to bed with this blanket made by his great-great grandmother, and one other blanket, a grey one he had been attached to since birth. They took the grey one he had been found with his head in. He had pulled it through the crib rails somehow and gotten himself stuck in it. You never think it will happen to you. You never think it will be your baby." 
 
 DeRosier finished her message, by urging parents to learn from her "world-shattering mistake." 
 
 "Please do not put your babies to bed with a blanket. Please. He was 7 months old, I thought because he was crawling, standing on his own, and climbing, that he would be fine with a blanket. This is the face of immense, unfathomable grief, the face of longing, of heartbreak, of self inflicted GUILT. I will NEVER stop feeling responsible. I will relive this for the rest of my life knowing EXACTLY what I could have done differently." 
 
 In a statement to GoodHousekeeping.com, DeRosier said that she hopes Sloan's story educates others about crib safety. 
 
 "Sloan was a light in the life of all who knew him, he was an absolute dream baby. It helps us to know that he is living on in the hearts of people around the world. We have received hundreds of thousand of comments and messages letting us know that his story has already saved the lives of so many other babies. His life was far too short, but his purpose is now so clear," she said. 
 
 Her words certainly serve as a warning. Approximately 3,500 infants die annually in the United States from sleep-related deaths, including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); ill-defined deaths; and accidental suffocation and strangulation, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). 
 
 The Good Housekeeping Institute's Chief Technologist Rachel Rothman says bare is best when it comes to you baby's crib. "Nothing should be in the crib except the baby and a tight-fitting firm mattress and fitted sheet," she explains. "Soft objects, loose bedding or any items that could cause entrapment, suffocation or strangulation should be out of the baby's sleep area including pillows, comforters, blankets, toys, bumper pads or anything that attaches to the crib slats." 
 
 Both Rothman and DeRosier's warnings mirror the AAP's recommendations. They suggest doing the following to create a safe sleep environment for babies: 
 
 Place the baby on his or her back on a firm sleep surface such as a crib or bassinet with a tight-fitting sheet. 
 
 Avoid use of soft bedding, including crib bumpers, blankets, pillows and soft toys. 
 
 Share a bedroom with parents, but not the same sleeping surface, preferably until the baby turns one but at least for the first six months. Room-sharing decreases the risk of SIDS by as much as 50%. 
 
 Avoid baby's exposure to smoke, alcohol and illicit drugs. ||||| A new mother who accidentally smothered her 4-day-old baby in a hospital bed has filed an $8.6 million lawsuit against Portland Adventist Medical Center. 
 
 Monica Thompson faults the Southeast Portland hospital for putting her newborn, Jacob, in bed with her in middle of the night so she could breastfeed him while she was unsupervised and heavily medicated with painkillers and sleep aids. 
 
 Thompson dozed off, then awoke to find that Jacob wasn't breathing on Aug. 6, 2012, according to the lawsuit filed last week in Multnomah County Circuit Court. 
 
 Jacob suffered catastrophic brain damage, and his parents removed him from life support six days later after doctors told them that his comatose state was irreversible. 
 
 Kristi Spurgeon Johnson, a spokeswoman for Portland Adventist Medical Center, said Wednesday she couldn't comment on the lawsuit until the hospital has had a chance to review it. She also declined comment about the hospital's policies about newborns sharing beds with mothers. 
 
 The suit highlights a grave area of concern in pediatrics: parents sleeping in the same beds with their children, including mothers sharing hospital beds with their newborns. 
 
 The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended in 2011 against bed-sharing. A 2014 study in the Journal of Perinatology catalogued the deaths of 15 healthy infants while sharing beds with their mothers in U.S. maternity wards. 
 
 Jacob was the first child of Monica and Graham Thompson. He was born by Caesarean section on Aug. 2, 2012, according to the suit. 
 
 Monica Thompson was medicated with Ambien and Vicodin a few hours before a nurse walked into Thompson’s room, gave her the baby and left around 3 a.m. on Aug. 6, 2012, according to the suit. The suit states that about an hour later, Monica Thompson was “still drowsy and groggy” when she realized her son wasn’t moving. 
 
 “She called for a nurse while she tried to get him to respond,” the suit states. “... She poked him and talked to him with no reaction. When no nurse came to help, Mrs. Thompson carried her son to the hallway and frantically yelled for help.” 
 
 The suit states that Jacob was stabilized and transferred to Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, where he died when he was 10 days old on Aug. 12, 2012, after he was taken off life support. 
 
 The suit seeks damages for the baby’s “desperation and anxiety” as he was suffocated and his mother’s “severe emotional distress upon unintentionally killing her firstborn child.” The suit also seeks compensation for Monica Thompson’s counseling expenses for depression and post traumatic stress disorder. 
 
 The suit was filed by Lake Oswego attorney Diego Conde. Read the lawsuit here. 
 
 -- Aimee Green 
 
 agreen@oregonian.com 
 
 o_aimee ||||| NIGHTMARES 
 
 A mother was charged with murder after her baby accidentally died while sleeping on his stomach. 
 
 After a jarring return to work and some prodding from our famously eager pediatrician, my husband and I have started “cry-it-out” with our 4-month-old son—a brutal, if necessary, method where exhausted parents train their babies to sleep by ignoring their cries. Last night, after our baby cried, then quieted himself several times during a 10-hour stretch, I went to fetch him for a morning feed and felt my throat fall into my stomach. 
 
 My baby had wiggled during the night and the fancy swaddle I used to wrap his arms tightly at 7 p.m. was now resting around his neck. My mind flashed with the threat I know loose bedding to be: suffocation, strangulation, death. His eyes peeked out at me through his nearly covered face. 
 
 Five years ago, in the middle of another sleepless stretch with my first son, my parenting fail was by choice. I looked at my 2-month-old baby, strong enough to bust himself loose out of my swaddles yet still unable to control the tremors in his hands or the reflex that made him feel like he was falling all the time. And so, I decided to join the number of parents who hide a dark secret: I turned my baby on his belly and let him sleep, which he did, for hours longer than he ever had before. 
 
 I revisited these and dozens of other errors I’ve made as a parent this morning—because around the same time I was imagining what might have happened had I not picked up my new baby when I did, The Washington Post reported another mother in Virginia had been charged with murder and child neglect for a mistake that led to the death of her son, Jahari. 
 
 Candice Semidey, 25-years-old at the time, was a new mother to a 4-month-old. She fed him, swaddled him, then lay him belly-down on a makeshift bed she fashioned out of a chair cushion and a blanket, according to the Prince William County Police public information officer, Sergeant Jonathan Perok. Semidey went to sleep, but when she woke up, her baby was dead. And according to the Prince William County prosecutor, placing Jahari on his stomach to sleep this way was so negligent it was murder. 
 
 Jahari’s death was unintentional, Perok told The Daily Beast. His mother wasn’t under the influence of any drugs or alcohol. Nothing else about her home concerned police or made them think the baby had otherwise been neglected, Perok said. 
 
 “These actions, however unintentional, were still deemed neglectful in accordance with the code section for felony murder which states, ‘The killing of one accidentally, contrary to the intention of the parties, while in the prosecution of some felonious act,’” Perok wrote in an email. “The underlying felonious act in this case was the felony child neglect.” 
 
 In the criminal complaint, the lead detective wrote that Semidey had acted in a manner “that was so gross, wanton, and culpable” that it showed “a reckless disregard for human life.” The charging documents noted that she had received proper guidance on how to put her son to sleep after his birth. 
 
 Semidey pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect in July of 2015, and was given a suspended sentence of five years. She’ll stay out of prison if she completes a three-year supervised probation. 
 
 Most parents used to put their babies to sleep on their tummies until the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) began telling them to put their infants to sleep on their backs. In 1994, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development began the “Back to Sleep” campaign, a federally funded push to stem fatalities from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). As a result, unexplained sleep deaths in the U.S. have fallen drastically—by more than 50 percent. Still, around 3,500 infants die unexpectedly while sleeping, from SIDS or accidental suffocation. 
 
 But lots of parents still eschew doctors’ advice in exchange for a good night’s sleep. In 1992, about 70 percent of babies slept on their stomachs, according to the National Infant Sleep Position Study. In 2010, that number fell to 13.5 percent. For African-American mothers like Semidey, the rate of stomach sleeping rises to 27.6 percent. 
 
 Is this a crime? Clearly it is in Prince William County. 
 
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 But to charge a grieving mother for murder, for making a mistake that millions of other mothers make every night, seems like a terrifying overreach. And Sergeant Perok told me the charge against Semidey wasn’t exceptional. “We in Prince William County don’t charge it often, but it’s not unusual,” he said. 
 
 The most recent example I could find of a similar charge was in 2010, when a woman was charged with child neglect over the drowning death of her 9-month-old daughter. Julia Sumo had left her daughter in the tub to investigate a burning smell coming from the kitchen. When she returned, her daughter was dead. Sumo was “beside herself with grief” over her “grave mistake,” according to her husband, but the judge said “some recognition has to be given to the fact that a life was lost,” and imposed 60 days of jail time. 
 
 Mothers are expected to be hyper-vigilant at all times, and for good reason: Tiny, vulnerable people depend on us. But every single one of us, even the best mother, has her stories. Every mother has felt the lump in her chest that comes with seeing her baby caught in blankets or finding a toddler who slipped away during the one moment she took her eye away in the supermarket. Every mother has had a moment when she realizes how close she has come to tragedy and feels relief that, this time, her baby is safe.
– A devastated mother took to social media to discuss the painful details surrounding her baby's death after critics began speculating that vaccines were to blame, Good Housekeeping reports. "To those who keep commenting and messaging trying to blame vaccines for our sons death—stop," Jordan DeRosier wrote on Facebook Tuesday, the day after the 7-month-old's death, which she had posted about on social media. "Initially I had not wanted to explain the detailed circumstances of his death because of my guilt and the fear of condemnation from others. But I will not allow anyone to try and place blame where it does not belong." DeRosier, who is well-known in the handmade and small shops communities, went on to explain that little Sloan was put to bed for the final time with two blankets. He somehow pulled one of those blankets through the rails of his crib and got stuck in it, leading to his death. In another gut-wrenching post, DeRosier told the story of how she found Sloan, who was the family's rainbow baby after two miscarriages and fertility treatments, the following morning when she went to wake him up, one of the blankets wrapped around his head. Paramedics couldn't save him, but DeRosier decided to share the details in an effort to save other parents the same grief: "Please do not put your babies to bed with a blanket," she writes. "I thought because he was crawling, standing on his own, and climbing, that he would be fine with a blanket. ... I will NEVER stop feeling responsible. I will relive this for the rest of my life knowing EXACTLY what I could have done differently." The post has been shared more than 13,000 times, and the story is being picked up widely in the media, with many outlets pointing to the AAP's safe sleep guidelines for infants in an effort to spread awareness. A YouCaring fundraiser has been set up for the family.