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Family Bed Doesn't Reduce SIDS Incidence

From: C-reuters@clari.net (Reuters)
Subject: Infants best left in own bed, study says
Organization: Copyright 1997 by Reuters
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997

Sharing a bed may encourage breast feeding, but there is no scientific proof that it protects against ``crib death,'' the most common cause of death between the ages of one month and one year in developed countries, they said.

The advice was contained in a policy statement developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. It was published in the August issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the pediatrics academy.

While experts believe that sudden infant death syndrome may have more than one cause, pediatricians recommend putting babies to sleep on their backs to reduce the risk.

Bed-sharing may actually increase the risk of such deaths because adult beds are not designed to meet safety standards for infants and may have softer surfaces that could lead to stomach sleeping, entrapment and suffocation, the policy statement said.

In a second study published in the journal, researchers at the University Hospital of Bergen in Norway reported that infants put to sleep lying on their stomachs, with their heads covered by bedding, had higher levels of exhaled carbon dioxide near their faces.

They were also less likely to be able to toss the bedding off than infants placed on their backs.