Member-only story

Did Raw Cow’s Milk Cause the “Crib Deaths” of Two of My Cousin’s Babies?

Coroners ruling: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Klara Jane Holloway
7 min readMar 21, 2022
smiling baby
Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash

In the 1960s my oldest cousin Stella* married a guy named Stanley* whose family owned a dairy farm. (* not their real names)

The couple was able to buy a home right across the road from the farm and Stanley worked there with his father.

Stella and Stanley started having children and soon 7 baby boys were born.

The eighth boy Stella had, Jeffrey, died from SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, frequently called “crib death”.

He was 2 months old.

It was very sad and shocking when Stella had another baby boy a little over a year later who also died from SIDS.

His name was Joey and he was less than 2 months old.

The questions were rampant. Two babies dying from SIDS that close together?

What was going on? What could have happened?

The talk amongst the grown-ups in the family was Stella and Stanley were feeding the babies raw cow’s milk from the dairy farm. They said that the milk was unsafe for babies to drink.

--

--

Klara Jane Holloway
Klara Jane Holloway

Written by Klara Jane Holloway

I write about my experiences in life. Some mundane, some sad, some funny, and hopefully none boring!

Responses (9)