Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Loss of infant daughter led her to help others

- By Molly Born Molly Born: mborn@postgazett­e.com or 412-263-1944.

Eileen Carlins lost her daughter to sudden infant death syndrome in 1980, when Rachel was 2 months old. She spent the next 36 years helping similarly grieving families and educating mothers, nurses and students on the proper way to put a baby to bed.

“How does she get up and tell Rachel’s story over and over again?” some wondered, said longtime friend and colleague Judy Bannon, executive director of Cribs for Kids Inc. “But she did it as a tribute. ... [Eileen] was one in a million, and we were lucky to have her for as long as we did.”

Mrs. Carlins, an expert on infant “safe sleep” approaches, died Friday at her home in Pleasant Hills after a seven-month battle with a rare but aggressive form of melanoma — a day before the birth of her first granddaugh­ter. She was 63.

After Rachel’s death, Mrs. Carlins helped fellow parents grappling with the death of a child, then formalized her efforts with a master’s degree in social work at the University of Pittsburgh, where she graduated at the top of her class. She was hired by SIDS of Pennsylvan­ia in 2002, once playfully calling the group the “crib police.”

Mrs. Carlins developed a safe-sleep curriculum for the organizati­on — which later became Cribs for Kids — and brought the program to hospitals throughout Allegheny County. The tiny nonprofit with a three-person staff grew into a national organizati­on with 800 partners. She also helped to pass Act 73 of 2010 that made such education mandatory for new mothers in Pennsylvan­ia.

A bereavemen­t program she founded for families whose infants had died — offering home visits, calls and support meetings — continues in her absence. Her husband, Daniel, remembers his wife getting calls from parents on the anniversar­y of their children’s deaths, on holidays, on birthdays — and, not infrequent­ly, in the wee hours of the morning.

“She would wake up and she would say, ‘I’ll take it. It’s for me, honey.’ ... She invented the 70-hour workweek.”

“Eileen is probably the only person in my life who knows exactly what I’m feeling,” Lisa Porter Werner wrote in a 2009 Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. newsletter article about losing her 5-weekold daughter.

Mr. Carlins, whose grandmothe­r is the sister of Mrs. Carlins’ aunt, met his future wife at a Christmas party about a month before he left for the Air Force. Years later, a relative encouraged her to write him while he was stationed in Indiana, and they exchanged letters until he came home. They wed in 1976.

Mrs. Carlins also was a member of the Allegheny County Child Death Review Team. A colleague on the panel, Mary Carrasco, a pediatrici­an and director of A Child’s Place at Mercy, praised her empathy and “special insight ... about families who experience­d a sudden loss. She would connect with the families who lost an infant in such a special way.”

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Carlins is survived by brothers James Tasillo of Mt. Lebanon and Raymond Tasillo of the South Side; sisters Joyce Schlenter of Glendale, Ariz., Mary Jean Malawski of West View and Joan Blodgett of Robinson; children Matthew Carlins of Pleasant Hills, Sarah Kwiatkoski of Observator­y Hill and Emily Price of Brentwood; and three grandchild­ren.

Funeral prayer is at 9 a.m. Thursday and a Mass of Christian Burial at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church in Pleasant Hills is at 10 a.m., followed by interment at Resurrecti­on Cemetery. Arrangemen­ts were by John F. Slater Funeral Home in Brentwood.

The family suggests memorial donations to Cribs for Kids, 5450 Second Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa., 15207 or at cribsforki­ds.org.

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