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Home › Articles › General Safety Issues › Co-sleeping Considerations

Co-sleeping Considerations

Does Sharing a Bed with Baby Increase the Risk of SIDS?

By Teri Brown

Pages:  1  2  3  

"I think the focus should be on the risk factors such as smoking, lying young babies on their stomach or side and having puffy blankets and soft pillows around a baby," Powers says. "There are safe ways for babies to sleep both in a bed with their parents and in a crib without their parents."

Powers believes it's possible that having Baby sleep near a parent to help monitor the baby's breathing is a benefit that wouldn't occur in a crib. "It doesn't make sense to me to focus on bed sharing being a culprit rather than the particular ways to make Baby's sleep safer, no matter where she or he sleeps," she says.

Current Research

Dr. Beckerman recently attended a SUID Death Scene Investigation Academy at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that focused on risk factors. It was attended by infant death investigators and other involved persons. The purpose of the SUID Academy was to encourage investigators to collect more accurate and standardized information from the homes or daycares of infants who died suddenly and unexpectedly.

"We and others suspect that approximately 50 percent of sudden and unexpected infant deaths, previously called SIDS, are really caused by accidental suffocation in unsafe sleep environments," Dr. Beckerman says.

Better investigation procedures will eventually give us more information on the tragedy of SUIDS. But safe sleeping practices just might be one way to prevent it from happening to your child.

Safe Sleeping Tips

Dr. Robert Beckerman, director of the SIDS Risk Reduction Program for the State of Louisiana, offers the following tips:

  • Avoid smoking cigarettes during pregnancy and tobacco smoke in the home environment, especially in your infant's sleeping area.
  • Stress to daycare providers for your infant that he must be placed on his back and in a safe sleeping environment. The data shows that when infants attend day care and their sleep position is switched from back to stomach or side that the risk of SUID may increase significantly.
  • Keep Baby at arm's reach in a bassinette or co-sleeper instead of in bed with you.


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