NEED TO KNOW
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Rebekka Card was nursing her 4-month-old son, Hayden, in the middle of the night when she fell asleep
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She was woken up by her husband hours later and they found their son unresponsive
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“Tragedy only looks preventable when you’re not the one going through it,” she shared on her TikTok
Rebekka Card was nursing her nearly 4-month-old son, Hayden, one night, just like she always did. Then, the unthinkable happened.
“I was exclusively nursing Hayden. He never really took a bottle, despite our attempts; he very much preferred nursing,” Card exclusively tells PEOPLE. “I nursed him at about 9:15 at night; I put him down in his DockATot.”
Card, 27, shares that she spoke with Hayden’s pediatrician, who recommended placing the DockATot in a bed, as there is a higher risk of suffocation when using it in a crib.
“That was something that I thought at the time was okay, so he would sleep in our bed,” she shares. “It was more convenient for me to nurse him in the middle of the night.”
Card explains that she would “always sit up” in bed to try and keep herself awake while nursing.
Rebekka Card
Hayden Card
“I would lean my back against the wall and the headboard and nurse him while he sat up in a crisscross position,” Card recalls. “I went to bed that night around 10 p.m., so just about 45 minutes to an hour after he did, and then I fell asleep, and he woke up to nurse again just before 1 a.m.”
She then grabbed the little one out of his DockATot, which was on the left side of her king-size bed, while she was in the middle and her husband slept on the right side.
Card, plagued with exhaustion, says she has “no memory” of falling asleep while nursing Hayden in the wee hours of the morning.
“I just like, fell asleep, and then the next time that I woke up was to my husband asking where Hayden was,” she recalls, noting that it was before 5 a.m.
“He looked up, and Hayden wasn’t in his DockATot,” she continues. “I was like, kind of sitting up, but in a slouched-like position, and Hayden ended up in between me and my husband.”
The infant was unresponsive, and the parents immediately called 911.
“I picked him up, and he was still warm,” she recalls. “We had done CPR in the home until the ambulance had arrived.”
She and her husband were separated and questioned by police and denied access to seeing Hayden. They were brought to the hospital, but no one would tell them what was going on until doctors came out to give them an update.
“Two doctors and a nurse came in, and immediately I knew. I felt it was from Grey’s Anatomy or a movie,” she shares. “They walk in and you can see it on their faces that he was gone. They came, and they told us that he hadn’t made it. I begged them to let me see him, and they wouldn’t let us. They were treating us as if we had done something.”
Hayden was eight days shy of being 4 months old at the time of his death. Card and her husband weren’t allowed to see Hayden before they left the hospital. Hours later, they got a call to come back and were able to say final goodbyes.
On TikTok, Card revealed that both Hayden’s cause of death and manner of death were listed as “undetermined.” Following an autopsy, doctors confirmed there were no signs of disease, infection, trauma, toxins or particles in his airway, which ruled out suffocation.
However, she noted that there was a paragraph stating that the cause of death was “consistent with SIDS” (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) and a mention of a “sleeping position causing a baby to not be able to breathe.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advises against bed-sharing with infants due to the increased risk of sleep-related infant deaths, which poses up to 67 times greater risk, per their website.
Rebekka Card
Rebekka Card and family
Card says Hayden had “the purest soul.”
“His energy was so genuine, so pure. The way he would look at you, how perfect he was, I swear he would rarely cry; he genuinely was perfect,” she says of the little one. “We did a lot in those four months; I wouldn’t change that time together for the world.”
Card shares her and Hayden’s story on TikTok. Following the tragic death of influencer Emilie Kiser’s toddler in May, Card posted a video playing with Hayden taken the day before he died.
“I fell asleep nursing my son, and he never woke up. Tragedy only looks preventable when you’re not the one going through it,” she captioned the clip.
“I recognized that there weren’t a lot of people going through what I was going through. I felt the groups I was connecting with, the people around me, didn’t understand the loss,” she tells PEOPLE. “When I started sharing, moms would message me, and people who were not moms yet, would talk about how much this resonated with them.”
Creating and fostering a community gave Card “a different light and viewing of his passing,” and “brought purpose to my pain.” She was able to find resources like Sleep Safe Seven for those who choose to bed-share.
“It gave me a bigger purpose to help people to know that they’re not dealing with that alone, and there’s someone that gets it, but also won’t trauma compare, or not be present with their needs too,” she shares. “I always leave my messages open for people and make a community.”
Although time can be healing, Card says there are still days when the grief is overwhelming and “it feels like the day he passed away.”
“Other days, I feel very motivated and driven to get things done. I trust myself and what I’m feeling,” Card shares. “When I try to suppress being sad, then it comes back harder.”
“The most important thing is embracing things as they come. Just because you smile doesn’t mean that you’re not also wishing that you could do that with your child,” she adds. “I always say, ‘I hope you find a reason to smile today,’ because I think that’s so important, like, how much I can heal you.”
Read the original article on People
