Envisioning a World Without SIDS
Virginia mother partners with state
One phone call forever changed the life of Kyra Oliver Hitzeman.
On June 11, 2002, the young mother picked up the phone only to hear that her son Hayes had stopped breathing.
“It was the most terrifying phone call of my life,” Oliver Hitzeman remembers. “To hear that Hayes was no longer breathing, then to see him at the hospital, lying there with tubes everywhere and no signs of life – it’s a memory that will be with me forever.”
After just 4½ months, Oliver Hitzeman lost her son to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
In the days following Hayes’ death, she started the Hayes Hitzeman Foundation in Richmond, Va., in honor of the son she was just getting to know and to ultimately contribute to a future in which no parent loses a baby to SIDS.
After several years of using funds to award grants for SIDS research and partnering with organizations that provide services toward SIDS prevention and education, the Hayes Hitzeman Foundation took another huge step in accomplishing its lofty vision by launching the This Side Up campaign.
In March 2006, the foundation partnered with VCU Health System, HCA’s CJW Medical Center, Owens & Minor and Virginia Hospital Laundry to kick off the campaign – an educational effort that seeks to raise awareness of SIDS and SIDS prevention through the distribution of adorable baby one-pieces and sleepers that read “This Side Up” on the front and feature other tips to reduce the risk of SIDS on the back.
“SIDS is a sensitive subject that most parents often are afraid of discussing,” said Oliver Hitzeman, who tirelessly runs the foundation in addition to leading the interactive practice public relations firm CRT/tanaka.
The goal of the one-pieces is to provide parents, grandparents and other caregivers – and even nurses – a tangible reminder that babies are safest from the risk of SIDS if placed to sleep on their backs.
The This Side Up campaign has spread to a dozen hospitals in Richmond, Mechanicsville, Midlothian, Lynchburg, Hopewell and Farmville, Va., and Livingston and Cookeville, Tenn. It continues to look for other health care partners across the country, and more than 50,000 one-pieces are in distribution .
“We’re anxious for the This Side Up campaign to spread on a national level,” Oliver Hitzeman said. “Hayes came into this world to make us aware, and we won’t let him down.”
