AIBU to think that mothers need to be given the real stats behind SIDS risk?

[clarabellabunting]

Watching Anne Diamond on TV this morning, she heavily implied that pretty much every single case of SIDS/cot death in the last year was in a smoking household. Does anyone know where she got this from and how I can get access to statistics like this?

This made me think about the stats we are given on SIDS and how much more statistical evidence should be provided to mothers so that we can make a realistic judgement about risk.

I would like to know what percent of deaths were babies whose parents were following ALL the recommendations. What percent were babies sleeping on their front?

Anne Diamond said that 2/3 of SIDS cases were in co-sleeping situations but then went onto say she didn't know how many of these were on sofas. Can stats like this be broken down?

We are often told the 'risk factors' for SIDS for us to avoid but are not given the numbers behind this. I wonder if they do not provide this because they don't want to 'blame' the bereaved parents who did not follow recommendations (especially because there seems to be no proven causal relationship between any of the risk factors and SIDS, just correlation).

Can you tell that I have a small baby and am thus obsessed with avoiding SIDS at the moment??? I think that even though the numbers are so small now compared to 20 years ago, the risk of SIDS still looms large in new mothers' minds and knowing how low/high the risk is for those who follow all the recommendations would be a big help in allaying our fears. Surely this information exists somewhere???

Knowing that 99% of SIDS (if that's what it is) happens in smoking households would be a good bit of info to spread if only to calm the fears of non-smoking mothers.

aswell that's interesting, I had a conversation with my hv about over heating and she said that in some warm countrys SIDS is thought to be lower due to air conditioning and bedding used when co sleeping as they tend to use sheets not quilts

Aswellasyou, respectfully, your post is quite irresponsible. The guidance about back to sleep has made for a dramatic reduction in SIDS, so for you to say that people shouldn't take any notice, because of an anecdote from your ex-bosses' coworker (tenuous to say the least), is quite frankly crazy. I hope no-one takes your advice.

I remember a thread a while back were some stats came up and I think it was that SIDS was reduced by 25% when they bought in sleeping on the back

However loads of people said that was only a snake decrease ( which it isn't) and were ignoring the advice as their baby's slept better on their front

Small decrease even

Bertie - yes, I think the Back to Sleep campaign started in 1992, and within a couple of years SIDS deaths had fallen from around 1200 a year to 300 (and have remained quite stable since). It's a huge drop really, and means you are something like 15 times more likely to lose a baby to stillbirth than cot death now.

Moomins - a snake decrease??!

Moomins - it reduced to 25% of the previous rate, rather than by 25%.

cocktail I know, never put your baby to sleep with a snake it could result in strangulation

Bloody iPhone

Thanks Rita knew it was something to do with 25% it's a significant drop

All my babies slept on their tummies (kept waking otherwise) as did I until I first got pg. Given there were no other risk factors (smoking, too warm an environment etc) & they could lift their heads from birth it was a decison I made.

As others have said, I think you need the full breakdown.

I do think you need the full breakdown. Easy to understand bullet points fine if you don't want to delve into research, and I think these should be available too, but the reasearch ought to be easily accessible to those who do want to know the reasons why XYZ is recommended.

RedHelenB I think the fact that babies do tend to wake less when on their front is part of the reason it's so much more of a SIDS risk. I remember reading somewhere that babies who sleep too deeply are most at risk, as they don't go through the natural light sleep/waking cycles that are biologically normal for a very young baby.

That's not a critisicm of you BTW, just pointing out that what you see as an advantage of front-sleeping is actually one of the biggest problems with it.

clarabellabunting made an interesting - and very relevant IMO - point. We know the factors that correlate with SIDS but we don't know what causes it. In reality we could be doing things to prevent SIDS that have 0 effect on the outcome, but we do them anyway in the absence of actual knowledge.

I wonder why boys are more at risk does anyone know why they think this is?

I think more boys die in utero too don't they? Maybe some genetic weakness.

Males are generally weaker. There are more males conceived than females, but more males are aborted / die in utero / die of childhood illnesses etc. than females, and by the age of 5 (?) there are equal numbers of boys and girls.

I once read somewhere that countries that largely co-slept had a much lower rate of cot death than western countries.

The only thing I can find is that most boys have a higher metabolic rate than girls and therefore their body temp can be higher than girls

Between DS1 and DS2 FSID brought in the guideline that babies should also not be left alone for daytime naps. I tried to follow this, but when DS2 was a couple of months old, he just wouldn't go to sleep in a bright room unless he was in a sling, and I didn't want to always do that if I could avoid it. So I contacted FSID and asked for more information about the actual risk - and got pretty much nothing. One helpline respondent said that she thought that the number of SIDS deaths in daytime sleep were very low - I think 4 a year or something like that. But despite repeated requests, I didn't get any actual statistics. So I had to make the decision without it. I really wish they would give us more information so we can make informed choices.

SIDS is unexpected rather than unexplained death, so does include accidental smothering.

The "back to sleep" campaign was about more than just putting your baby on their back. It included not smoking around the baby, putting them at the foot of the bed, and not letting them get too hot. There just aren't the statistics that say whether just putting your baby on their front is a risk factor on it's own.

My DD2 had reflux and would choke on her sick when she was on her back. So after doing lots of research, we decided that it was more dangerous for her to be on her back, where we could see that she was choking - but we might miss it when we were asleep. (This was after the first 2 weeks where she only slept on DH or me.) We tried to eliminate as many other factors as possible and then have taken the risk to put her on her tummy.

I would love to know the actual risk factors. It would have made my decision a lot easier - and let me get some sleep the first few nights rather than lie there watching her.

I agree with camdancers point that while a 75% decrease is very compelling evidence against babies sleeping on their front, it isn't as clear cut as that because it coincided with more stringent advice about smoking around babies among other things.

The 75% stat that is often flung around without real understanding of it terrified me when I was trying to work out how to let my son get some sleep, since a straight 75% reduction by sleeping on the back translates to a 300% increase in risk by putting the baby on it's front, but it isn't that simple. There are confounding factors like smoking (which we don't do), co-sleeping, overheating, family history and infant illness all of which affect the individual risk. Due to the nature of SIDS and it's many potential causes, it is impossible to give clear stats such as 'sleeping on the front increase risk by X%. overheating by 1 degree increases risk by Y%'

camdancer:
"SIDS is unexpected rather than unexplained death, so does include accidental smothering"

I'm confused - on Wikipedia (not infallible, I know) it says that:
"Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is marked by the sudden death of an infant that is unexpected by medical history, and remains unexplained after a thorough forensic autopsy and a detailed death scene investigation."

Surely accidental smothering would not then be classified as SIDS. Suffocation would be evident in an autopsy wouldn't it? And if the death is explained as acccidental smothering, it no longer 'unexplained' criteria for SIDS.

That's why I'm always a bit perplexed when discussions about preventing SIDS often talk about co-sleeping in the context of parents accidentally smothering their babies.

I have always understood smothering to be completely separate to SIDS. Like clara I find this issue confusing.

Much of the bullet-point type advice seems to be saying that co-sleeping is a SIDS risk. But if you actually read the research it is clear that co-sleeping might be a smothering risk but is actually recognised as reducing the risk of SIDS.

Clara - that was my understanding too - that it was both unexpected and unexplained.

I found this website great for information, it is Australian but has plenty of statistics (including references, some of which are based on UK studies), and clear guidance:

www.sidsandkids.org

The information statements are great:

www.sidsandkids.org/safe-sleeping/information-statements/

and contain statistics on the impact of smoking, second hand mattresses together.

As it was mentioned up the thread, the issue of bed sharing is also covered, here:

www.sidsandkids.org/wp-content/uploads/Sleeping-with-Baby.pdf

and it appears the jury is out on whether it imapcts on SIDS or not.