to think that back sleeping guidelines are taking the piss

[extrastrongnosugar]

on my third baby here, just got him fresh from the hospital and its day four. and night four with 1-2hr sleep totals for me. its 3am now and i had 45min so far. hes fast asleep after nursing on me but once i lay him to bed, nicely swaddled with rolled up tetras on the side for a lovely huggy feeling, he inevitably wakes up and starts crying. i am now rembembering that with number 2 i didnt even try. am just reading up on the guidelines again and tgey basically admit the reason back sleeping prevents infant death sybdrome is because it prevents deep sleep and that most babys prefer to sleep on their belly. i love it that they recommend back sleeping until year one, completely oblivious to the fact that a baby that wont sleep on its back will sleep on the mother - which is much riskier and also nice for pretending a person can go a year without sleep and not become homicidal. AIBU to think back sleeping is completely impractical advice that doesnt take into account other risk factors and follow a kind of stupid circular logic? i have another suggestion: if deep sleep is so dangerous lets just all wake up our babies every hour - at least that way well get a full hours sleep now and then!

Ds2 would only fall asleep on his tummy. So I would let him have 5 mins as I patted and rubbed his back, then I would flip him on to his back. Now at 14, he’s still a tummy sleeper!

I can remember the back to sleep campaign, it was just as I started high school. The difference in numbers of losses since that campaign, can not be argued with.

to all the mums and dads who’ve lost a little one to SIDS.

I haven't RTFT but have you tried an Angel Care system? DS was just like your baby, I almost went insane from lack of sleep till I put him on his tummy with an apnea monitor. The alarm goes off if baby stops breathing, so you can get the best of both worlds - you both sleep, and baby is safe. Mine saved my sanity in those early days, please do look into getting one. My DSis is a paediatrician and she fully approved of this approach.

YANBU but some babies do settle fine on their backs. My daughter does. My son however never slept on his back and in the end to prevent us all going mad we did just have to let him sleep on his front.
I dont think it does significantly raise risk of SIDS if the baby is full term and has no other medical issues. He could raise and turn his head. You have to weigh it up, is the minute risk of SIDS worth the very real risk of going insane from lack of sleep?
Of course its better to get them to settle on their backs, if you can... but if you really cant then you do just have to let them sleep on their fronts. The NHS should be more honest about that really... many babies just will never sleep on their backs no matter what you do. But the guidelines put the fear of god into you and I got so depressed and anxious with my first because he slept on his front... thinking hes going to die, and of course he didnt.
With my second I was prepared to be more relaxed but luckily she settled on her back fine from the get go!

Gosh that Ann Diamond video is so heart breaking. That poor lady.

Why do you think most parents find it impossible to sleep their babies on their backs? Mine had no problem with it and I don’t know anyone else who struggled either. Perhaps there is another issue that you are unaware of preventing your baby from feeling comfortable on his or her back?

I wonder this also. When is the last time you saw a baby sleeping in a pram on their front? Every baby I've ever seen has been asleep on their back...

What about slightly elevating the mattress at an angle. This can help sometimes?

I did supervised tummy sleeps during the day, never at night time I couldn't risk it - sleep begets sleep as a midwife told me and soon enough he was sleeping 5 hours straight a night. And he's now 8 weeks and will sleep on his back no bother.

My previous baby never slept and I nearly lost my mind. I ate shit off my jumper thinking it was chocolate in the height of my sleep deprivation.

If there anyone who can mind him for a few hours in the early morning? (I always found 4am - 9am the hardest)

Also these are meant to be good although I never used one - lulladoll.com

I do use the sound sleeper app and that helps.

Why do you think most parents find it impossible to sleep their babies on their backs? Mine had no problem with it and I don’t know anyone else who struggled either. Perhaps there is another issue that you are unaware of preventing your baby from feeling comfortable on his or her back?

Babies don’t sleep as well on their backs the whole point is to not let them go into such a deep sleep they never wake up.
This is no reason not to do it.
I would always rather be woken up every 2 hours then increase the risk of them dying. My DD didn’t sleep through until she was 2 I understand his awful sleep deprivation is but is it worse than losing a child?

If there’s on piece of advice that you should adhere to it’s to put your baby to sleep on their back. The reduction in deaths purely from this simple price of advice has saved thousands and thousands of deaths. They have dropped from several thousand a year to about 300 a year. The evidence throughout the world is consistent.

I am a midwife and have just gone to the latest safe sleep training, so I can give you exact details about all the SUDI deaths ("Sudden unexpected death in infancy") in the country I am living and working.

Of all the babies younger than 4 months dead by SUDI:
Sleeping on their back: 5%
Sleeping on their side: 31%
Sleeping on their front: 64%

"I dont think it does significantly raise risk of SIDS if the baby is full term and has no other medical issues."

Sleeping on the front increases the risk of dying by at least 6 times for healthy, term babies. Even more (up to 20 times more!) for babies with other risk factors, such as prematurity, smoking, etc.

OP, no one is going into your house to tell you how to put your baby to sleep. These data, and the chats that maternity health professionals have with you, are intended as information to help you make your choices, which everyone acknowledges are based in more than one factor.

However, without this information you wouldn't have all the facts. It is not "taking the piss". Babies sleeping in their front increase their chance of dying of SUDI by a huge amount. The chance is not "minute", we are talking 1 in 200-250 babies who sleep on their front dying of SUDI. Several babies in a small town. Hundreds in a small-sized city.

If your baby happened to be one of the unlucky ones and no one had told you this, how do you think you would feel about it?

I have a six week old he isn’t my first. He sleeps on his back in his Moses basket or we follow safe guidelines. He sleeps through from 11 until around half five sometimes longer. My first didn’t sleep. Should I be waking him?

@HavelockVetinari angelcare (and similar) monitors are shown not to reduce SIDS.

They can also give parents a false sense of security by leading them to think they can put baby to safely to sleep on front with a monitor or in their own room with a monitor.

It's like the vaccine situation. Because rates of SIDS have gone down (because of the back to sleep campaign) people forget what it was like and the devastation it caused. And they stop valuing the guidelines.

Mine always settled happily on their backs. I appreciate I was lucky, but it's by no means a given that they don't like it.

Is it no l

On no three. I do a mix of cosleeping and a side cot.
It did make me me smile to myself when in the hospital with this one I was cosleeping quite happily and the nurse came in woke me up, told me I had fallen asleep with the baby, took the baby of me, wrapped it up, put it in the cot and left the room. Baby immediately started crying. Yeah cheers for that. I just picked baby back up and nursed him back to sleep.

The guidelines aren’t realistic.

You seem angry when guidelines are trying to save babies. In the 1970's all our babies slept on their fronts. This evolved after a study in New Zealand suggested that premature babies did better this way. And the babies liked it. HOWEVER, SiDS is very complex and sometimes is a combination of things including respiratory illness that might not have been noticed. This also contributes to poorer breathing when settled on the front. The sleeping in the same room is all about being super vigilant to changes that might suggest an illness. Being a parent is a massive responsibility and if being super vigilant might cause some sleep loss, better that than miss a clue all is not well with your baby. Talk to people who have lost a child, the pain is unbearable. I agree much advice given seems over the top, but choose carefully which ones you ignore, and do it for a very good reason. Please don't go down the road of co-sleeping, there are many dangers down that road whatever you are told. SIDS research is very thorough for example debunked the myth of antimony in second hand mattresses

YABVU. Completely and utterly.

OP, total sympathy.

The guidelines are an ideal but will not work for everyone - if your baby just won’t sleep that way then something has to give.

Lots of people have mentioned:

Safe co-sleeping
Tilting the mattress

Can I add a suggestion of the sleepyhead? For the first couple of weeks my husband and I took it in turns staying up holding our daughter as she just wouldn’t be put down. We then tried a sleepyhead and she would go down for a while, and it increased every time.

We put this in the snuzpod over the mattress and tilted it. After another couple of weeks she did 2-3 hours at a time.

I have recently weaned her off it now she is older which involved a few very tough nights but she now sleeps on her back in her crib.

I am not saying this will work for you, I understand there are some babies nothing works for, but as your little one is so tiny it might be worth trying other things.

Congratulations on you’re baby and hang in there, you’re doing a great job

Disclaimer: it isn’t lullaby trust approved as it isn’t flat. However I researched it and found no positive evidence of it being unsafe or having been linked to any infant death. Either way it is significantly less dangerous than falling asleep holding them, which is the inevitable result of trying to stay up all night.

The guidelines are an ideal but will not work for everyone - if your baby just won’t sleep that way then something has to give
the baby is 4 days old, she hasn't even tried.

If you want to give your child an 8x risk of dying in infancy, you go ahead and put them on their front.

@goodgirls I didn’t tell her to put her baby on her front, I suggested ways she could try to get her baby to sleep on her back.

Also 4 days is young, they have been curled up for weeks and it takes time to uncurl

Babies do like sleeping on their tummies, it's true.

Sorry OP, I know you must be craving sleep.

Surely even if OP co sleeps with her baby he still won't want to sleep on his back? I'm not sure how co sleeping solves the problem?

Co-sleeping helps if you've got a baby that you've been trying for weeks to settle on its back and they won't sleep. Often this is babies with reflux. Took 6 weeks for my first reflux baby to sleep more than 20 minutes on her back in a basket or cot and I tried all of the above suggestions - swaddling/not swaddling, propping up, reflux wedge, warming the mattress first. Out and about had to be in a sling or lie-flat buggy that was slightly raised, and even then she only slept if I kept moving. Thankfully at 6 weeks the right medication meant she slept in her basket for a couple of hours at a time. DC2, also reflux, when I also had a toddler to look after, I tried for three weeks then ended up co-sleeping with her lying on her side facing me.

Of course everyone should start out following the guidelines, but I think there needs to be more support for those of us who have tried everything and are on our knees. If you are having difficulty, there is nowhere you can get help.

Safe co-sleeping was suggested as it’s much safer than OP accidentally falling asleep while holding baby.

Some babies can be fed to sleep laying down and then you can move away and baby will stay asleep on their back, whereas if you tried to move them to the cot they would wake up.

Other babies will co-sleep fine on their backs but won’t sleep in their cot on their backs.

Yes, some babies will not sleep on their back either in cot or co-sleeping but it’s better to set yourself up to co-sleep safety rather than risk falling asleep in bed or on the sofa by mistake while holding your baby.

Definitely keep silent reflux in mind, when babies don't seem to 'uncurl' and are very unsettled it's often silent reflux - purely based on me, people I know and stories I've heard.

My 2 youngest ds's were prescribed a hydrolysed milk as their silent reflux didn't respond to anything else. Once on that milk they were perfect-ish sleepers. Something about not being able to digest the protein and possible allergy/intolerance. Just something to keep in mind