SIDS and co-sleeping: is there a risk?
THE HEALTHY TRUTH: Putting babies to sleep on their backs has dramatically reduced the number of SIDS cases in the past couple of years, but it hasn't disappeared altogether.
Often there is an underlying medical condition, and now medical researchers are paying attention to another factor - parents sleeping with their child.
With a recent study claiming co-sleeping with your baby increases the risk of SIDS five fold, what's the truth?
Should we all be re-thinking our sleeping arrangements?
Whether it is the result of pure exhaustion, after an early morning feed, or a conscious parenting decision, almost all parents have shared a bed at one point or another with their child.
Nicole Bridges didn't plan to bed share with her three babies.
"My eldest just turned 15, so we started in her first year of life, so [we’ve been bed sharing for] probably around 14 and a half years now," she said.
Three-year-old Quinn still happily sleeps with his parents.
Nicole said the biggest benefit to co-sleeping is that the whole family gets more sleep.
"That's the big one. More sleep for everyone," she said.
In a recent study of more than 8000 infant deaths, 69 per cent were bed sharing when they died.
"The worst that can happen is we see an infant death, and we really don't want to have children dying in this day and age when we know we can create safe sleeping surfaces for children," Karen Passey from SIDS and Kids Australia said.
Neonatologist Dr Howard Chilton said parent-child bed sharing is historically linked to breastfeeding.
"[Bed sharing] is part of the natural things that humans do, especially breastfeeding humans, you have to make it safe because it developed at a time when baby sleeping arrangements were totally different to how they are in the 21st century," Dr Chilton said.
To bed share safely, Dr Chilton advises:
• No alcohol
• No drugs
• No smoking
• A large firm bed
• No blankets
• No other children or animals
• The baby must be on their back
Most importantly, according to Dr Chilton, there is one place you should never sleep with a baby.
"The sofa. Couches are really, really dangerous, because there is a cleft and the baby falls into the cleft," he said.
MY VERDICT: The definitive answer is that the safest place for a newborn to sleep is in a cot next to the parents' bed, there is no question about that.
We know that sharing a sleep surface can increase the risk of SIDS, but we can't tell people not to bed share, because that's what humans do.
So it's about reducing the risks. No matter where a child is sleeping, parents need to do everything they can to keep them safe.
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