Safe Sleep Practices for Your Young Infant

A CDC study published in Pediatrics found that soft bedding, unsafe sleep surfaces and locations, and the presence of stuffed animals are still leading causes of accidental suffocation in infants under 4 months of age. The study examined nearly 5,000 cases of sudden unexpected infant death and found that soft bedding was a factor in 72% of cases.

For years we as pediatricians have preached to place your infant to sleep on her back, to not allow soft surfaces, not allow any pillows or blankets in the bed and by all means do not sleep with your child. This study published in our flagship journal Pediatrics confirms again why this is so. But even with this hard data (and this is one of many studies on this topic) parents continue to believe others and allow their children to sleep with them in a bed, allow soft surfaces, soft animals and the like.

In doing so, these parents create an unsafe sleeping environment for their child and put them at risk of death.  If you are using any of these practices, I hope this study will convince you to stop doing these things. As your kids’ pediatrician, I can certainly make recommendations based on the latest evidence, but can’t make you do these things.  As always, please ask me questions about this and other topics at your child’s routine visits.