Without Cribs, Needy Families Can't Rest Assured
Jill Porter - 12/23/2005
SOPHIA GIBSON has mixed feelings about the two cribs she received this week from the Maternity Care Coalition.
The Germantown woman is thrilled that her twin daughters will have a safe place to sleep when they're born, which could be any day now.
But she regrets that she received the last cribs that the financially strapped coalition has to give away.
"I feel bad," said Gibson, 23, a Germantown hairstylist. "It's a shame."
It's also a potential danger for the many newborns who, for want of a crib, may wind up sleeping with other family members. Sharing a bed is a recently recognized danger that helped launch MCC's Cribs for Kids program last year.
But the agency has been so overwhelmed with requests that its crib budget for the entire year was exhausted in five months.
And agency officials are heartsick that they've had to to start turning people down.
"It's horrible, particularly at this time of year, to have to tell people who are so needy that we can't help them," said JoAnne Fischer, head of the agency.
"We're concerned about the safety of the babies.
The calls have never stopped.
Since the city launched a safe-sleep campaign in fall 2004 - prompted by columns in which I exposed the high rate of SIDS deaths (sudden-infant-death syndrome) that occurred when babies were co-sleeping - demand has been relentless.
"Our expectation was that there was this pent-up demand, and after the TV ads ended and brochures were distributed, that the demand would lessen some," Fischer said.
"But I think what has happened is that people in the street know about it, and more and more social-service people are calling us."
MCC gets about 350 crib requests a month, according to Ilisa Stalberg, head of the Cribs for Kids program.
The agency has given away 4,200 cribs since September 2004, when my columns appeared, she said.
Fischer said she was "shocked" at the demand.
"But when you look at the numbers of poor people in Philadelphia, that's shocking, too."
One out of four infants in the city lives in poverty, she said.
Meanwhile, the American Academy of Pediatrics, which previously had a neutral stance on co-sleeping, issued new infant-sleep guidelines two months ago firmly discouraging the practice as unsafe.
Statistics show that unexplained infant deaths occur more frequently when an infant is sharing a bed or sofa with another family member - not to mention the number of infants who are crushed when a sleeping person inadvertently rolls over on them.
MCC is the only agency in the city with a large-scale crib-giveaway program.
Cutbacks in federal and city allocations, plus Katrina donor fatigue and other setbacks, have left the agency struggling.
"We have 35 proposals out," Fischer said of the grants the agency is seeking to close the financial gap.
There is something you can do as an individual.
You can donate $75, which will provide a new crib, crib sheet and sleeper to a family. If you want to make the donation in someone's honor, MCC will send them a holiday card acknowledging the gift.
It's a worthy cause at any time of the year, and particularly meaningful during a holiday that celebrates the birth of another infant who had nowhere to sleep.
And it will be a relief to the 250 families already on the waiting list.
Sophia Gibson knows how fortunate she was to get the last of the cribs."One of my cousins, she lost her second son to SIDS," she said.
"I'm not sure why he died. He was in the bed with her, though." *
Donations can be sent to Cribs for Kids at the Maternity Care Coalition, 2000 Hamilton St., Suite 205, Philadelphia, Pa. 19130. 215-972-0700. Or online at www. MOMobile.org.
E-mail porterj@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5850.
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