A Beaver Lake mom and her husband created a foundation to help families with infant loss, while also providing training and tools to prevent more in the future.
For parents, there’s nothing more exciting than welcoming a healthy baby into the world and experiencing all their firsts with them. Almost four years ago, the Wasniewski family was living in that bliss.
"We were just like, it’s perfect," mom Racheal Wasniewski said. "Our family is complete. We were just happier than we’ve ever been."
Racheal and her husband had a daughter, Nora. Then, they welcomed their son Nicholas into the world on Aug. 28, 2020.
"He was very vocal, and he was fun, and he laughed and played with Nora," she said. "And Nora was the best big sister ever."
After four months of maternity leave, Racheal returned to work and Nicholas and Nora went to a daycare run inside a home. Nicholas had only been going there for a little more than a month when one phone call plunged the Wasniewskis into darkness.
"The daycare lady called and told me that Nicholas was no longer breathing and he was being rushed to the hospital, and I just lost it from there," Racheal recalled.
She begged the doctor to let her in the room, which he did.
"Just let me be there and maybe for some reason, I thought I had the power to bring him back," Racheal said. "It was just the worst thing leaving the hospital without him."
She called the daycare to find out what happened and was told Nicholas suffered from sudden unexplained infant death, or SUID.
However, she says the state investigation told a different story.
Rachael says investigators learned Nicholas had been laid down in a crib wearing a hoodie, unmonitored upstairs, and wasn't checked on for an hour.
His arms were swaddled inside a blanket, which should never be done once a baby starts trying to roll over.
Racheal says Nicholas likely aspirated then suffocated after throwing up and rolling over onto his stomach with no way to turn himself back over, and no one monitoring him.
She says the coroner ruled his death as SIDS, telling her that his death was unpreventable, so the daycare provider was never criminally charged.
"I didn’t know how I was going to survive," Racheal said. "I was in a really bad, dark place. But the biggest thing that stuck with me was that he wasn’t going to be remembered, or he wasn’t going to have a legacy to leave behind. And he didn’t deserve any of that."
Through their deep grief, Racheal and her husband, Toby, created the Remembering Nicholas Foundation.
With this nonprofit, the Wasniewskis help families who have lost their babies pay their hospital bills and funeral expenses. They also encourage them to go to counseling, which the Wasniewskis also help pay for.
"Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t have the means to bury their children, you know they’re just starting out their life together," Racheal said.
Racheal also teaches free classes to childcare providers with lessons on pediatric CPR, first aid, and safe sleep.
She says she was even more motivated to do this after she learned that Arkansas has one of the highest infant mortality rates in America.
"It means the world to me that they come to these classes, and they’re ready to learn," she said. "And they’re spending their Saturday with me, all morning, it’s like a five-hour thing, learning how to perform CPR and use AEDs while in an intense situation."
So far, the Wasniewskis have helped more than 50 families and certified more than 100 childcare providers. They have the goal of teaching another 100 this year.
Rachael also gives childcare providers who take her course free Owlet baby monitor socks, which measure vitals when a baby is put down to sleep.
She hopes that as the number of trained at-home childcare providers goes up, the number of calls and emails she gets from families navigating the loss of a baby will go down.
"I’m trying to make the best of what I have available to me, and that’s helping others and trying to save lives as well because the last thing I want is for a mom to have to experience what I did," Rachael said.
You can learn how to support the foundation here.
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