CEDAR FALLS - Ami Aikey was on her route as a meter reader for Cedar Falls Utilities when she got the call.

Come to the CFU visitor's conference room, she was told. Once there, Aikey was instructed to get to Sartori Hospital immediately. Something was wrong with her baby daughter.

"When I got there, there were people standing around. I knew right away," Aikey said.

Olivia Nora Aikey had died of sudden infant death syndrome while sleeping at her daycare provider's home. Efforts by the daycare provider and paramedics to revive her were unsuccessful. It was Aug. 10. The baby had turned 4 months old that day.

"I had just played with her in the morning, and by the end of the day they were asking me which funeral home we wanted for her," Aikey said.

Olivia was one of 33 Iowa babies to die of SIDS from October 2006 to September 2007, according to the Iowa SIDS Foundation. Nationally, about 2,600 babies die of SIDS each year.

SIDS is the sudden and unexplained death of an apparently healthy infant younger than one year of age. Most SIDS deaths occur in babies between 2 and 4 months old.

Researchers have been hunting for a cause of SIDS for more than 20 years. Last year, researchers at Children's Hospital in Boston documented abnormalities in the brainstem - a major part of the brain that regulates breathing, blood pressure, body heat and arousal - in babies who died from SIDS, according to a press release from the CJ Foundation, which funded the research.

"It's very exciting news," said Patty Keeley, executive director of the Iowa SIDS Foundation. "This is a major breakthrough, knowing there's a potential biological cause. Then they can begin looking for clinical diagnostic and preventive measures."

In the meantime, parents who have lost babies to SIDS seek answers where there are yet none. For those parents, support groups are available. Aikey sought the services of New Hope, a local support group for parents who've lost young children.

"I needed to be around people who have experienced the same thing," Aikey said.

Roxanne Novak, coordinator of New Hope, knows exactly what the Aikey family is going through. She lost her daughter, Anna, in April 1999. Anna was almost 5 months old.

"It's very isolating when it happens," Novak said. "With this support group we try to build relationships with others who are surviving the same thing."

Novak said New Hope offers support to parents for months and even years after their child has passed away. Many of the parents go on to have more children, and New Hope supports them through that process, which can be scary. The Novaks had an older son, and after Anna's death went on to have twins and also adopted a child.

The Aikeys were satisfied with the size of their family after Olivia was born. When Kennedy, 3, was joined by her little sister Olivia, Ami and her husband Jamie decided that Ami would have a tubal ligation to prevent further pregnancies. Now, the couple is seeking medical care in Iowa City in the hopes of reversing it.

"I feel like I've been robbed," Ami Aikey said.

Aikey plans to become a peer counselor to other moms who've lost a baby to SIDS, and she and her husband have offered Olivia's medical records to a leading SIDS researcher in Seattle in the hopes that a cause of SIDS can be pinpointed.

"That part of my soul will never heal," Aikey said.

Contact Meta Hemenway-Forbes at (319) 291-1483 or meta.hemenway-forbes@wcfcourier.com.