SIDs risk question..

[Nobhobs]

DS still shares mine and DHs room. He usually has his bedtime routine in the living room, gets put to bed in his Moses basket at 7pm and moved up to his crib in our room whenever we go to bed, between 10pm/12am. This used to work fine but now he wakes up constantly with the tele noise or DH and I talking, last night I put him to bed in our room and then sat in bed reading in a book and he didn't wake up once.

I would ideally like to put him to bed in our room at 7pm, and then go downstairs to the living room and just have the monitor on and check on him every half hour until I go to bed later in the evening. I'm just worried about the SIDS risk and everything seems to suggest baby sleeping in the same room as you reduces the risk by 50%. I'm overly paranoid about SIDS, as I know two people that both sadly lost babies in this way, and it just seems too real.

I know lots of people put babies in their own rooms earlier than this, and that's personal preference, but from a purely medical point of view would these few hours drastically increase the SIDS risk?

Sorry, he's 5 months/24 weeks

The peak risk is aged 2-3months which has long passed so I would think it's fine.

He will be absolutely fine in a separate room with a monitor. Just make sure the mattress is firm and there are no unnecessary blankets or toys in the crib.

Thank you. He's in a sleeping bag with nothing else in the crib. Just so scared of sids..

Would one of those breathing Angel monitors help reassure you? Just for when he is in a separate room (turn it off when you go to bed with him as they tend to go off unnecessarily).

He'll be fine. Just go up and check on him every 15 minutes or so and make sure the room is not too hot or cold. You said he's in a sleeping bag so that's great, no need to worry about blankets or anything

I've looked at the research a lot, because I was interested in the differences in approach of advice between different countries.

From what I can tell, the research that shows the risk drops doesn't have an age cut off, because that simply wasn't a part of the information that they studied. It's quite likely that therefore it applies to all babies and the SIDS risk is cut at any age.

However, not all ages present the same risk of SIDS to begin with, as Random says. The peak risk time is around 2 months and the risk of SIDS drops to almost nothing at 4 months. Obviously, that doesn't mean that you should ignore guidance altogether, particularly guidance that pertains to other sleep risks such as suffocation, entanglement and entrapment. But it's quite likely that factors such as room sharing are more important before 4 months of age. If nothing else it's basic maths - half of a larger risk is a bigger drop than half of a smaller risk.

Then you have to think in terms of how guidance is worded. It's not usual for research findings to be published in their raw form because most members of the public are laypeople and not necessarily skilled in interpreting research findings into clear and practical advice, let alone when it's sleep deprived new parents you're aiming this advice at. So the UK advice goes for 6 months. This is a blanket, one size fits all recommendation. That means that it's probably a little overcautious and overshoots the worst risk, and that some (most?) babies would be perfectly fine if moved a little earler. But at the same time, they want people to actually follow it and not dismiss it as impractical and drop it too early, so given UK culture has quite a strong theme of getting babies in their own rooms ASAP, they probably don't overshoot it by very much. Some other countries advise 12 months - since SIDS by definition ends at 1 year of age, this suggests an approach of reducing all risk to the minimum. But my instinct goes back to that 4 month period where SIDS is highest risk, and says that the first 4 months are the important ones, and after that it is not taking a huge risk to move them.

Then a couple of years ago a study came out in the US which actually suggests 4 months as the optimal time to move babies out - as it provides the essential first months of protection against SIDS, but the gains in safety after 4 months are minimal or not measurable, and babies moved at 4 months (apparently) have better sleep than babies moved out later. That's intriguing to me. I personally prefer my babies to be in with me for longer, but I definitely think the 4 month theory is where I settle on it being the most important, based on what I've read about infant sleep safety.

How odd that you can’t find the study you read that in Custard 🤔 Almost as if it’s... not true 🤨

I would feel confident putting baby down upstairs now, with no cot bumpers, teddies, blankets, etc, on a firm mattress in a cot or crib. It will soon be the new normal and you’ll get your evenings back a bit 😊

Doh - excuse my rambling as I thought you wanted to move him to another room entirely. Well, most of it still applies. I'll just add:

The research doesn't specifically say that the risk of separate rooms applies to all sleeps, and there is no official body that I know of anywhere in the world (including the NHS, BTW) aside from The Lullaby Trust which recommends this. And in fact the Lullaby Trust have only begin to recommend this in the last few years. It's a fairly recent addition by them, and I'm not aware of any new research which has prompted its addition.

Now, you could take this one of two ways. We don't have research which specifically contrasts shorter sleep periods (naps, early evening sleep) with the longest stretch of sleep that tends to overlap with adult sleep, which is what most advice centres on. Common sense would say: OK, SIDS can occur during any sleep, so it makes sense to follow guidelines during every sleep. Fair. However, as you're finding, in reality, not so practical. And in real life where people aren't perfect you have to weigh up the cost and the benefit. So if you have a full term, healthy, vaccinated, not underweight baby and neither parent smokes or is a drug/alcohol addict, you're already pretty much as low as you can go in the SIDS risk stakes. If you breastfeed, even partially, even lower. So if you have a baby who is already very low risk for SIDS, do you really need to be worrying about following every guideline to impractical levels during every sleep? Realistically - probably not. OK, don't take that as a green light to go and decorate the baby's cot with pillows, whack the heating up to full and put them to sleep on their front, next door. That would be silly. But putting them to bed before you in the evening so that you can actually have an evening before you go and spend that majority portion of the night where your sleep times (mostly) overlap following the guidelines more completely? This is not high risk for these babies. And in reality it's probably not a huge deal for any baby, unless they are being put to bed in an unsafe environment. We are talking 2-4 hours out of 10-12 - it's not a massive proportion. Babies of an age to be high risk for SIDS are typically waking very often to be fed or soothed back to sleep, anyway. Your mental health and time together as new parents is important. Establishing sleep habits that don't massively disturb the baby is helpful. I don't think the Lullaby Trust's advice is common sense. I think it's confusing, albeit technically correct. And I also think the type of parents worrying about breaking it are not the ones whose babies are most at risk.

It's unsupervised sleep, so all of the suffocation and entanglement type risks still apply, but with a clear cot (no sleepyhead etc), baby on their back (unless they can roll to their front by themselves), not swaddled and especially over 4 months old, I would not hesitate to do this. We did it at 3 months and I didn't worry about it.

Oh god the vaccine stuff scared the crap out of me when DS1 was tiny. Actually though there is good evidence to show that babies who have been vaccinated are at lower risk of SIDS. It would be quite logical that 2-4 month babies, at the peak risk for SIDS are usually within 3 weeks of having had a vaccination, considering that they tend to have about one every 4 weeks at this age. That just means they are two things which typically happen at the same time - not that one is causing the other.

Not every country has the same vaccine schedule - some do the newborn vaccs at 4/5/6 months instead - their peak months of SIDS risk do not move.

Thank you for all the responses

And thank you @BertieBotts for taking the time for such a detailed response. You have put my mind at rest (though I've been upstairs every 5 minutes to check on him and he's only been up there an hour! )

I’m gonna get flamed here but hey ho.

My DS is 17 months. By 6 weeks he napped for 1.5/2 hours in his own crib under a monitor in our room 3 times a day without us in the room during the day, twice when the midwife visited. At that point we had a discussion with them about moving him into his own room at night and into his cot as the room was much cooler, it was the heat wave, our boy was sleeping very well & various other things too. We did this with their knowledge & advice. I would do it again based on circumstances but not be too worried by specific “time frames”. Maybe not that soon but it was 31 degrees in our room, 24 in his.

SIDS is a risk basically whatever the age, but you need to take into account other things. If your LO is doing well & now getting disturbed, I’d say now is the time to move them. Good luck xx

@CustardT

Statistically there are 130.4 deaths from SIDS in every 100,000.

Statistically in 2018 more than 142,000 people (mostly under 5’s) died from measles alone.

Please vaccinate your child/ren or give them to someone who cares about them enough to get them protected.

idiot

I can understand your fear - but the ‘sleep in the same room at all times until 6 months’ guideline really gets my goat to be honest as I think it’s completely unrealistic and causes more stress than is necessary for new parents. Yes it reduces SIDS - but then so would staring at your child non stop while they sleep... expecting that of you would be silly though - and expecting a 5 month old to fall asleep in the same room as you with the lights/tv on is just as ridiculous. We had a baby monitor with a screen to watch him on which made me feel more at ease. Statistically I can’t give you any answers on the increased risk - but I know the greatest risks are accidentally falling asleep with baby on you and sleeping with baby under influence of drugs and alcohol. Also positioning baby on back is important - as far as I’m aware sleeping in the same room as a 3 month + old not nearly as important or significant as those.

You have to do what you want to do - at the end of the day it is your child.

For us DD1 was in her own room at 8 weeks - DD2 was 12 weeks. Both DDs have had a bedtime routine from 6 weeks and both have been really good sleepers.

I used an angel care monitor with both DDs and it put my mind at rest.

Like you, I am terrified of this because I have seen it happen with a friend's child.

With ds1 I had the angelcare movement monitor. It really gave me peace of mind and allowed me to sleep without getting up 100 times a night to check if he was breathing.

Ds2 is 6 months now, this time we got the tommee tippee monitor monitor with the movement sensor and a camera. Again I know he's breathing without having to check on him but also the camera is great. He sleeps with a teddy so I can make sure on the monitor that he doesn't have it covering his face.
The alarm went off for the movement sensor once, meaning it hadnt detected movement (breathing) for 20 seconds. I got up straight away and called him and picked him up. He was fine but apparently after reading up He could have been holding his breath for the 20 seconds, which I think is a really long time, so I'm glad I was alerted to disturb him and make sure he was ok.