Sleeping in same room/SIDS

[finallypregnant]

I have read that it is recommended that baby sleep in the same room as you until 6 months old to help prevent cot death.

DS is just about out of his moses basket at 3 months old. We could move the cot into our room and hopefully it will fit - just, if not at all.

DS is an incredibly noisy sleeper. From about 2 am he grunts and groans virtually continually although remains asleep throughout until he wakes for his feed between 3 and 4 am.

I have only read that sleeping together is recommended but can't find any evidence for us not to move him into his own room. If there is any evidence then there is no way I'd risk it but we are very, very tired so looking for something to confirm the position.

[cornflakegirl]

FSID recommend that it is safest for your baby to nap and sleep in the same room as you for the first six months.

www.fsid.org.uk

[cafebistro]

I dont know why it is recommended and why SIDS is less likely to occur if you keep them in your room?? But its a recommendation that ive followed along with all the others. DD is also bf in the night still so its convenient to keep her with us.

[pamelat]

Hello, my cousin died of cot death (a long long time ago) so I was a bit overly anxious about it.

However, I moved DD in to her own room at 5 months on advice of HV. She was surprised that she wasnt already in her own room.

HV said (and was right) that we were waking her and she, in turn, was waking us constantly

I would never be brave enough to say to move them before 6 months as advice to anyone, but it worked for us.

Most people I know moved their little ones earlier than 6 months, its about what you are comfortable with - as if you aren't comfortable, you won't sleep anyway.

I was happier once my DD could move around more, at 5 months she was fully able to pull the blanket up or down etc etc - made me feel ok about it (probably irrationally so)

[pamelat]

Also, I heard that the main reason is that little babies can "forget" to breathe but that hearing you breathe will "remind" them .... anyone else been told that?

[beansprout]

It is recommended as babies need you nearby to help regulate their breathing. Plus the fact that they are our young and we are animals after all and it's a slightly odd thing for a baby to sleep 20 feet (or something) away from its mother.

Earplugs are good if you have a snuffly baby. You will still hear them when needed but it can help with a lot of the low level noise!

[PrettyCandles]

You've got to find the balance that works for your family. Not much point keeping the baby in the room with you to prevent SIDS if you then crash the car through your own over-tiredness.

Besides, nothing 'prevents' SIDS - the actions you take merely reduce the likelihood of it. So if you follow all the other guidelines: feet-to-foot, cool bedroom, back-sleeping, no smoking, etc, then you are already reducing the chance of suffering SIDS.

[finallypregnant]

It's so difficult to know what to do. I accept sleeping in the same room but for naps would mean me going to bed 3 times a day when I have other things to do and then I'd need to go to bed at 6.30 pm when he goes to bed.

I am not trying to justify doing it just trying to make the right decisions.

[cornflakegirl]

I think they suggest that the baby sleeps in whatever room you are in during the day, and in the evening until you go to bed.

I didn't do this with DS - I don't remember the FSID making a thing about daytime naps then, and the contrary advice (from various books) that babies should sleep in a quiet, dark place made sense to me.

I do find it hard with FSID advice, because they don't know what the reason is, just the statistical relationship. It makes it so much harder to make a balanced decision.

[tinierclanger]

Can anyone point me in the direction of the actual stats? I seem to be excessively paranoid about this and am currently ensuring our baby is always in the same room as us when sleeping - so he doesn't get 'put to bed' at 8pm, he stays downstairs until I go up to bed with him, let alone having him in a separate room overnight. But hardly anyone else I know does this!

But I would really like to know the actual percentage of babies put to sleep on their backs, from non-smoking households, who die of SIDS. I can't make an informed decision on the general advice which just combines a whole bunch of things...

[CaptainKarvol]

This article is one of the most comprehensive I've seen, but doesn't go into the kind of detail you're asking for. I expect the detail will be found in individual research projects not collated nationally, but I'm not sure.

[tinierclanger]

Thanks, that's interesting even though it doesn't give the breakdown I'm after!

[cornflakegirl]

This is from the FSID website. Haven't read it properly, but it looked more like what you're after. If not, maybe contact FSID directly?

[tinierclanger]

Hmm, it's still not quite there. This article
www.rcm.org.uk/magazines/from-the-rcm/bedsharing-roomsharing-and-sids/

states 'Sleeping in separate rooms was associated with a significant risk of SIDS only if a parent smoked. '

but then still goes on to say 'The authors conclude that the safest place for babies to sleep is in a cot in the same room as the parents for the first six months. '

but why? Are we back in the scenario that general advice is given to everyone, even when it's not necessarily evidence-based, like the alcohol and pregnancy thing, or is there some evidence out there that's just hard to find?

[finallypregnant]

Very conflicting because I have and I am sure you have been told to establish a day from night situation which means putting DS in a harkened room at 6.30 pm when he goes to sleep. As a family we can't all sit in a darkened room from 6.30 pm every night!

[sfxmum]

regardless of SIDS advice dd always slept in our room be it in her cot or our bed. during the day she napped where ever I was I did not have to go to bed, we never did the dark room thing anyway and I would get on doing whatever I needed to do within reason

not much help I guess, as for noise dh snores a lot so am used to disrupted sleep but it did not seem to bother dd

[dannyb]

If you take into account all the babies who died of SIDS the risk of putting your baby in it's own room is 10 x the risk of keeping them in the same room as you in their own cot. The most dangerous place for your baby to sleep is actually on a safe where the risk is increased by nearly 50 times. Obviously you have to weigh up the pros and cons but there is more than ample evidence to suggest that the safest place for a baby to sleep is in a cot in your room for the first 6 months. If you are going to move your baby into their own room I'd be tempted to try and hold out until 4 months when the risk of SIDS starts to drop significantly

[tinierclanger]

That doesn't really answer my question though. What is the evidence, disengaged from the other risk factors? I don't want to put the baby in a separate room overnight, I just want to put him to bed in our room, then come back downstairs for a couple of hours...

[ib]

The evidence is not disengaged from other risk factors - the numbers are small and they can only establish correlations based on whatever information they are given by the parents plus a post mortem. They are just running regressions and telling you which of the factors you can control appear to be meaningful. That's all they can do.

I found the article linked to as 'current research' on this page useful (I had a half brother who died of sids so was terrified when expecting ds)

[missEdith]

to answer your question we started leaving dd in our room from about 5 months in the evening but we were just down the hall and I would check on her regularly, just because that is how I am
I think if you weigh up factors like no smoking household ventilated room baby not too warm on his back no obvious health problems then I guess the risk of SIDS is highly reduced

co sleeping is not recommended but I always did it because on balance I thought it was not a huge risk for us

[tinierclanger]

I know it's only correlations but I still don't see why it can't be broken down by each risk factor involved in the analysed cases.

Oh well, will carry on keeping baby with us in the room at all times, it's not really a hardship, just goes against all the sleep advice!

[ib]

Because depending on which factors you choose to include in your regression you get different significance measures for each of your factors.

Because you can only use the data you have and you may be missing significant information.

Because there may be correlations between the risk factors that make it harder to run your statistics.

These are just limitations of the methodology, unless you do controlled clinical trials (which for obvious reasons could not be done) you are going to be working with dirty data and won't get clean statistics!

[tinierclanger]

Hmmm...ok, you obviously know what you're talking about and I'm not a statistician!

[finallypregnant]

We put DS is a room by himself at 6.30 and leave hime until I got to bed at 9.30. Am I being irresponsible doing this then? All evidence shows that a good bedtime routine and teaching a baby night from day early on is a must to avoid problems later on. Therefore baby should be in a darkend room at night. Obviously the rest of the family can't be expected to go to bed at 6.30 pm!

ib - may be I am just tired but I don't understand a word you said! So sorry!

[ib]

Sorry - just saying that statistics run on data collected from a general population are and always will be imperfect.

Little is known about sids. It is postulated that some babies when they are in very deep sleep may be unable to rouse themselves if they stop breathing. This is only a very small proportion of all babies.

For those babies, things which stop them going into quite as deep a sleep may avoid them failing to rouse. The longer they are in very deep sleep, the more of a chance that one of these episodes may happen (assuming they are uniformly distributed which seems to be the common assumption).

Of course all the advice therefore goes against what would establish the longest, deepest sleep pattern - that's why they think it works!

The vast majority of sids cases are between 2 and 4 months, so that's when it pays the most to be extra careful.

It's up to you what you feel is an acceptable level of risk. We take risks every day - every time we step out into the street. Sids guidelines can only tell you what things seem to reduce the risk. They don't eliminate it though, and even if you do everything 'wrong the risk of sids is still small.

[dannyb]

I think that the main thing is that you weigh up the pros and cons yourself and decide what is most important to you and your family. If the most important thing is establishing a routine where your baby is sleeping through the night quickly then you need to measure that against the SIDS advice. If you think of the numbers of babies born each year and the fact that there are only 1500 deaths a year from SIDS then the risk of it happening to your baby is very small. That risk is decreased further if your baby was full term and of healthy birthweight who has no exposure to smoking and sleeps on his back in a cool room on a firm mattress with light bedding. However, despite all of these things there is still a risk of SIDS, no stats and nothing you can do can prevent it happening it just makes it less likely. By putting your baby in his own room at 3 months he runs a higher risk of SIDS but it's still a very tiny one and incredibly unlikely that anything will happen to him but only you can make that decision.