To wonder how I can stick to guidelines on baby sleep

[BlinkMissed]

Lullaby trust states if baby rolls to their front then you must put them back on their back unless they can wails roll both ways.

My DD is 6 months old and can roll back to front but only seen her go front to back once (by mistake as well I think).

Lately during sleep she keeps rolling over, it's like as soon as I lay her down she can't wait to roll over so I am consistently rolling her nqck til she falls asleep.

Last couple days she rolls over during her sleep and I've woken to find her sleeping on front.

I'm obviously concerned about sids risk but AIBU to let her sleep on front even if she is unable to roll back? She has quite good head control and I think she's a strong baby.

What's the MNetters opinions on this one?
It really is tough being a new mum

Sigh
No longer roll. Will remove when he's remembered how to roll back

As long as your baby can roll over both ways, no need to wake the baby up that I have ever heard

Am watching this with interest, as 8mo DD is exactly the same. Have had to disconnect the breathing monitor because she somehow manages to travel all over the cot, and it was literally going off every few minutes and waking her up. No chance of keeping her in the feet at the bottom position, she was put to bed that way but is currently totally the other way round - looks like she has rotated 180 degrees around the axis of her head! In this weather she is just in a babygro to sleep, but in cooler weather she is in a grobag, which does not seem to restrict her movements at all. She isn't a great sleeper, so trying to move her while asleep seems more than a bit daft. Watching with interest!

When my mom was growing up all the advice was to put babies on their tummies. Then when she had me it was to put babies on their sides. They really don't know what causes SIDs but it's extremely rare. The risk peaks at 2-4 months so I think your DD is probably out of the danger zone.

My DD can roll tummy to back, but not the other way around yet. So I lucked out on that one so far.

When my dd was young, we were supposed to sleep them on their front.

Is 6 months still classed as a new mum?

Yes, Brabra - I believe it does
Most jobs have a 6 or 12 month probation period where an employee is classified as new.
Why would 6 months not be a new mum?

SOME babies sleep better on their fronts. Like some people do. SOME babies can't stand it. Like some people.

No point in making sweeping generalisations about ALL babies because they're all different.

OP, so long as there's nothing in there that could be a suffocation risk, and she's able to turn her head, I think she'll be ok on her tummy. DS1 never slept on his tummy, he always slept on his side, but DS2 likes sometimes to roll onto his tummy. I just made sure there was nothing that could block his face/nose/mouth and let him get on with it. He's very mobile though, rolls all over the place and has done since he was first able to roll! (He's 20mo now).

I don't really know where people get their facts from but here are some more -

the very reason SIDS is a lot rarer these days is due in a huge way to the Back to Sleep campaign.

Yes, lots of babies sleep 'better' on their front. Research suggests that this may be the problem. That they go into a deeper sleep that way and simply 'forget' to breathe.

I'm not suggesting the OP gets up all night to turn her child over, but sleep position DOES matter, and SIDS CAN occur in older babies. I know of one who sadly died recently aged 18 months. As the mother of a child who died of SIDS please don't be complacent.

Oh and to suggest that there is no more research into SIDS as 'its so rare' is bonkers. Over 300 children still die of SIDS in the UK every year.

brabra sorry I will rephrase, being a mum is hard

I totally get that 300 is 300 too many and of course it's awful and tragic when it happens, but statistically speaking, 300 is nothing. You need at least 2000 to be able to extrapolate data across a country or population, and out of that 300 there will be factors which need to be eliminated such as unsafe sleep environments, current known risk factors, etc, which will push the number even lower.

To put the 300 figure into perspective, there are 800,000 babies born in the UK per year, and around 3,500 stillbirths. 300 is rare.

There can be no more research, unless they discover a medical factor - the latest study was the Bradford Infant Care Survey, but even that can't really claim to be a study on cot death as it just looks at correlation between different ethnic groups. (All cot death studies look at correlation though, by its nature, cot death is unexplained). The recently publicised cot death study used old data, it was not a new study.

The research that we have shows that sleep position is NOT important once babies can roll back onto their backs. And, really, it's not practical to stay awake all night turning a baby onto their back if they can only roll back to front. It would be impossible to go about daily life! The back to sleep campaign is incredibly important but it applies to small babies, not 18 month olds.

And I appreciate that it doesn't matter how rare it is if it happens to you, and I'm sorry for your loss.

Sorry if my post came across as unemotional and cold, I was really talking with a statistician's head on. I can't imagine how it feels to lose a child.