The Nicholas Michael Slack Foundation

My name is Kathleen Slack. I am the founder of the Nicholas Slack Foundation for SIDS and Sudden Infant Death Awareness. Nicholas Slack is my son. He died at 50 days old. The whole thing has been like living in a very bad dream. In the months following Nicholas’s death I have discovered that the resources for grieving parents are truly limited here in the state of Michigan, especially on the local level. What I would like to do here is offer parents the answer to the question "what next"?

On November 13, 2007, my 7 week old son was put down for a nap, a nap from which he never woke up. I was at work when I received the phone call from my husband who was at the hospital. My Nicholas, my brand new healthy, beautiful little boy died. We were really just getting to know him and now here he was along with the 60+ babies before him just this year, here in Wayne County, gone. Right before Christmas, we got the death certificate, he died from pneumonia. He had no symptoms to even alert us that anything was a problem.

Although investigation is protocol, it is common for investigators to treat parents as guilty until proven innocent. This compounds the horror of losing a baby. Not everyone that loses a baby suddenly is negligent, nor are the necessarily a criminal, but yet all parents are lumped together and feel victimized on top of insurmountable grief. I would like to offer referrals to parents to grief counselors and other support people that are able to see them on an emergency basis. After a loss such as this, most parents do not have weeks to wait to find help that they need.

Not many new parents have established a funeral fund for their children, so financially they are unprepared for such a tragedy. I would like to try to offer some relief on some of the burden.

What I would like to accomplish in establishing the Nicholas Slack Foundation is to raise public awareness about sudden infant deaths and SIDS in Wayne County, they happen far too often.

In the weeks waiting on Nicholas’s cause of death I have found comfort within a SIDS support group, in addition spending many hours reading anything I could about SIDS and sudden infant death.

From everything I read and discovered from talking to other parents who have lost babies, the “preventives” for SIDS truly are false claims, there is no preventing SIDS. People who followed the precautions have still lost babies. I do feel that by listing these things as “preventatives” as much literature does, it creates a false sense of security. SIDS is not about parents being negligent, it isn’t about color or how much money you have in the bank, it can happen to the best of parents and the nicest of people.

I would like to eventually offer new parents CPR classes offered at convenient times for them, so they can have the knowledge of what to do when emergencies occur. Wayne County offers a program called Operation Safe Sleep, it has received little media attention. New parents of infants in Wayne County are invited to attend a class on infant sleep education, for attending they receive a pack and play, I did know about this class, called the number, left a message and never received a call back. I would like to help promote positive programs that work in educating parents that do in fact educate everyone.

I would also like to create a fund to help assist parents who have had a sudden unexpected infant loss. I would like to set up a network to these parents on necessary steps to take in planning a funeral or memorial service for their baby. Some of the things I would like to include within this network are grief assistance, florists, printing shops, funeral homes, churches, banquet halls, caterers and restaurants. Planning a funeral is a burden, planning it for your baby is a nightmare, no parents should have to do this alone. Each time a parent uses services I would like the donation to the family to be made in the name of an angel, a child who is no longer among us.

My first event that I would like to hold would occur at some point this summer I am hoping. I would like to call the event the MOM PROM. This would be an event used to raise money to make the Nicholas Michael Slack Foundation a nonprofit organization. Any other revenue established from the MOM PROM would be used to begin setting up all of the things I would like to accomplish in starting this organization.

In order to make the MOM PROM happen, I do need an establishment for either a Friday or Saturday evening. I would charge an admission for the event. The whole idea of the MOM PROM is to offer busy working or stay at home moms a break, a fun night without the kids and the stresses of every day life. I would invite consultants, who have home party catalog businesses such as Mary Kay, Party-lite etc. to come and set up tables to hold mini parties for the Moms who attend, anyone who has gone to any of these parties usually do find them to be fun. The consultants would be selling items from their catalog lines. The consultants would either pay a table fee for use of the space or be willing to donate a percentage of money made on their sales to the foundation. I would also like to offer items to raffle during the event. I would like to offer both food and some type of entertainment to make this event fun while raising money in Nicholas’s memory that is going to truly help other families through the horror that ours has endured.

If there is anything you are able to do in order to make the 1st Nicholas Michael Slack Foundation for SIDS and Sudden Infant Death Awareness MOM PROM a success, please feel free to contact me under the contacts section of this site. Thank you so much for taking time out to read about my Nicholas and my hopes to keep his memory alive and help other people through such a horrific tragedy.