Hestias Ups and Downs- Lourdes Cruz

Unfortunately Hestia has hit a downfall. When we completed our design proposal, we found out that we are not battling SIDS, instead we are trying to prevent children from dying because of suffocation. To be more specific we are trying to prevent “sleep related causes of infant deaths, deaths that can be linked to how or where a baby sleeps. The child can suffocate because they may be trapped between a mattress and a wall, or it may be strangulation, when a cord such as a string from a toy wraps around his or her neck and it blocks the baby’s airway. SIDS is when a child dies unexpectedly without a known cause. Therefore SIDS is not the same thing as suffocation and is not caused by it.

Just because at the moment scientist haven’t found a cure or a reason for SIDS occurring, it doesn’t mean they aren’t working hard to research evidence and conduct tests. A lot of research suggest that infants who die from SIDS may be born with brain abnormalities that have brain cells who are not doing their job in controlling breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure. Therefore the child is unable to breathe.

On the good side we finally decided on a design. We are going to make a blanket with a pillow around the head so the baby stays on its back, and it doesn’t ruin their head development. We are also going to add an anklet that has a heart rate monitor that can read the baby’s heart rate monitor and if it becomes abnormal it will alert the parents.

Another issue we are worrying about right now is that we were hoping to have a heart rate monitor be somehow connected to the blanket, but we realize that it may be very dangerous since it can wrap around the infants neck. So we decided that putting it around the baby’s ankle would be the best idea. But now the issue comes with building/rebuilding a heart rate monitor. There are a lot of great heart rate monitors out there, but some are too bulky, and we can’t just take their ideas and products and call it our own. We have to take apart a heart rate monitor and try to put it back together, without it being similar to the original product, but still making it work the same way.

The design proposal we had to create was challenging because it was long and confusing, yet it also helped us realize that we have to tweak some parts of our project.