A grieving mother whose 17-month-old daughter died while napping in a car seat is speaking out about her unbearable loss with hopes that it won’t happen to another family.
“On June 10, 2015, I got a call while I was at work. Mia didn’t wake up from her nap,”Lisa Smith toldToday, describing the horrifying call she got from her daughter’s home daycare.
Fighting back tears, Smith toldToday, “This was our beautiful little girl. Perfectly healthy in every way.”
“When they [doctors] came in and told us that she didn’t have any more brain activity,” explained Smith, “all I did was I turn to the doctor and said, ‘I know.'”
Smith told WFAA that she didn’t let Mia sleep in her car seat because of the risks.
“Losing a child, it’s beyond soul-crushing,” she shared withToday. “The hardest part is that this was so easily prevented. And we lost a daughter needlessly. No family deserves this.”
Opening up to WFAA, Smith said that her daughter Mia was her “firstborn, our only child, and she didn’t deserve what happened to her. But other families don’t deserve this to happen to them either.”
Sharon Evans, a trauma injury prevention coordinator at Cook Children’s Hospital, told WFAA that “there’s nothing about the car seat that’s designed [for] sleep,” and that “of course, if the straps aren’t tight, the child can kind of slump down.”
The Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, a nonprofit representing the juvenile products industry, toldTodaythat children should not be left in their cat seats alone.
“How many parents do you think might not know this?” Smith said to WFAA. “Probably a lot.”
Smith said that when she walks around town and sees people using car seats at restaurants or putting them on the floor at tables, she “literally” walks up to them.
“I say, ‘You know, I had a daughter who was seventeen-and-a-half months who passed away and I just want you to be really careful.'” she told WFAA.
source: people.com
