Share and Follow
Anne Diamond has opened up about her baby son’s devastating cot death.
Her son Sebastian suffered sudden infant death syndrome aged four-and-a-half months in 1991.
The presenter, 69, was awarded an OBE for her work campaigning to raise awareness about SIDS following his death.
Aiming to raise awareness on Wednesday, Anne told GB News: ‘The message is just a way of reminding everybody, because obviously there are new mothers and fathers all the time, there is the new generation always who won’t know who I am, they won’t remember my personal tragedy.
‘You just have to keep reminding and Safer Sleep Week is just about reminding them of the advice. First of all, the most important thing is your baby should sleep on his or her back, and then watch out for not overheating them.
Anne Diamond has opened up about her baby son’s devastating cot death
Her son Sebastian suffered sudden infant death syndrome aged four-and-a-half months in 1991
‘There are lots of tips to make their sleeping environment much safer. But the most important one is back to sleep and has been there for 32 years.’
During the discussion with hosts Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, she said: ‘At the time in 1991 when I had Sebastian, we were all told to sleep babies on their tummies and that was the accepted practice, but we what we didn’t know it was really heightening the risk of death to all of those babies.
‘It doesn’t mean that every baby who sleeps on its tummy is going to die of cot death. But for some reason, it just meant that if we could give out that very, very simple message, put your baby on his or her back to sleep – the cot death rate plummeted.
‘Nobody even to this day, nobody really knows why. The mechanism of death, what changes it, we just know that it works and there’s no danger in sleeping your baby on his or her back either.
‘So do it and you severely reduce the risk of death happening to you.’
The TV presenter’s devastating loss became the focus of a national campaign, called Back to Sleep, to help prevent cot deaths like Sebastian’s – a campaign that experts have credited with saving thousands of lives
Anne added: ‘I was angry at Sebastian for dying. God, it’s 32 years later and I can still get very, very upset about it. But you do. I was angry that he died and he didn’t call out for me.
‘I was angry that when he was born and lived with me and slept and then died they were actively campaigning in New Zealand to try and stop this happening, because they had a very high cot death rate there.
‘The Anne Diamond, if you like, of the New Zealand, a television presenter called Judy Bailey, went on telly every night and said if you’re just about to put your baby down to sleep, put him on his or her back, not the tummy and this will help and their cot death rate plummeted.
The presenter, 69, was awarded an OBE for her work campaigning to raise awareness about SIDS following his death
‘I went out to New Zealand and met her and it was anger that drove me to come back and demand that we have the same advert here, the same campaign.
‘Of course, I got all this complete nonsense from the Department of Health saying, young mothers do not watch television, I was told that they would put a sort of a working party on it that would meet in five years time and look at the data.
‘And then I found out, even worse, was that we in Britain, we knew what was going on in New Zealand and we’d agreed to be a control.
‘In other words, while New Zealand mums were being told how to save their baby’s lives, we actively denied British mums that advice and during that, Sebastian and others were dying.’
At around the time of Sebastian’s death, Britain was losing 2,500 babies to cot death every single year which equates to 5 or 6 every single day.
If you have been affected by anything in this article, please contact the UK Child Bereavement line on 0800 02 888 40 or the The Lullaby Trust on 0808 8026868
