To think FSID shouldn't be promoting the use of dummies?

[TheDevilWearsPrimark]

here

I think the advice is based on very loose research evidence and they are wrong to suggest your child is unsafe if you do not use one.

I went through many a sleepless night worrying about this. In the end I read the research, or much of it, and decided against a dummy, because ds2 (now 5 months) is always bf to sleep, except when he falls asleep in the sling (when being close to me is, I believe, protective in terms of arousal threshold), and we co-sleep (safely!!). He wakes very easily and always has done - he does not sleep for more than an absolute maximum of 15-20 minutes if he is not in the sling or right next to me. As I do not actually 'settle' him to sleep without bf, and I read in the research and advice that the dummy should not be reinserted if it falls out when the baby is asleep and typically a dummy will fall out very quickly, I decided that bf to sleep must do the same or similar to whatever a dummy does. The advice may well be more valid to parents who do not feed to sleep or babywear. And it did make me rather unhappy before I came to the conclusion that I did.

Anna888 - the thinking (I think) is that when a child falls into a deep sleep, the dummy falls out of its mouth so the child will rouse itself slightly in order to re-suck the dummy, therefore not being in that really deep sleep that may be dangerous.

So bf-ing would not have the same effect, as the nipple is not in the child's mouth all night (just 99% of it in my case)

And incidentally, my ds was exclusively bf but he still had a dummy during the night.

RosJ - indeed. I need much more data to believe this.

My mother, who had her children in the 1960s, always found the advice to put babies to sleep on their fronts counter-intuitive; and her mother, who had her children in the 1930s, found the then frequent advice not to cuddle her children, counter-intuitive.

So we are hypothesising that it is the sucking rather than the dummy that is important?

But squonk the adviceis not to put dummy back in if it falls out isn't it?

I heard this information about dummies ages ago!

It kinda makes sense to me...i am sure i will be told if i am wrong, but dosen't dummy sucking keep airways open?? You need saliva to suck on the dummy so you are swallowing more therefore keep airways 'active' when in a deep sleep.

Out of my 8 children 4 of mine had them...because they needed them. Only for sleeping. None have had any problems from using them. Teeth are all fine etc....

My breast-fed baby had a dummy on occasions too....so acually that kinda makes 5 out of 8

Dummies are there if you want to use them for your chidren.

parents choice... and if new information suggests that dummies may help prevent cot-death....then they should be telling us that..imo.

I see, squonk. But I often experience ds2 'sucking' in his sleep, so something or other seems to rouse him anyway. And that theory doesn't explain why a dummy does not need to be re-inserted if and when it does fall out completely in sleep.

Other theories I have heard for the protective effect are that the bulky handle stops the air supply being cut off should a baby wriggle down under the blankets or be on its back, and hat the sucking improves the strength and reliability of breathing, 'trains' it iyswim.

sorry, be on its tummy

Well, someone mentioned earlier that there are lower cases of sids in breastfed babies- I wonder if that mat be why as many bf babies fall asleep on the breast
Hmmm I nteresting. Can anyone answer us? Where can we go with this hypothesis?

I don't know - I only know that this is what I was told when ds was born.

This was over two years ago, so I don't know if what I was told was in any way related to the research that this thread is about.

The advice not to put the dummy back if it falls out would tend to support the hypothesis that the dummy is a breast substitute.

When my daughter woke at night when she was a co-sleeping tiny baby, she would always hunt out my nipple, have a suck (often pretty quick) and then fall asleep on the breast and quickly pull away from my nipple.

Thanks rubyslippers. Couldn't face another battle - her current tactic is to fall asleep while I'm trying to get her to take a bottle Moving on to cup now...

But breastfeeding can be completely compatible with dummies. As I said, both mine had dummies. Both breastfed for more than a year (neither had bottles at any time).

Another thing I think the research found was that the protective effect of dummy use was greatest in 'adverse' sleeping environments, e.g. co-sleeping with a smoker. That would seem to me (I am not a scientist) to support the theory that sucking strengthens the airways.

berolina- I know what you mean about that sucking motion- they do that quite a few times in the night, don't they?
Idobelieve- of course new evidence should be taken into account and its all about parental choice ateotd
I don't think that anyone has suggested we all just ignore it

I remember hearing similar advice to this when DS was born 2 years ago.

I am not one of lifes great intellectuals and, like most people, I have to rely on the advice given - I would see no reason whatsoever to feel that FSID would be giving weak or inaccurate advice.

out of interest - how robust was the "back to sleep" evidence when it first came out? Has the MMR research made everyone so jaded that we are going to ignore potentially life saving advice until it is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt?

oh sorry mrsruffalo..i thought that is what the op meant.

I suspect that there is not one single protective effect of dummies, but various sets of circumstances in which dummies might protect - e.g. the 'slipping under the blankets' scenario, the 'arousal from deep sleep' one (which might protect, for example, from a too-deep sleep in a too-warm room). I would hazard a guess that the case wrt bf is similar.

I have lso noted that the protective effect of dummies is stated much more clearly and frequently than that of bf. I'm not against this atm, as in the current climate of woeful bf 'support' the last thing women for whom bf didn't work out (and I could have been one of them) need is this most terrible of all sticks to beat them with. But that's a digression.

Both mine had dummies and DS was a breastfed co-sleeper.

LOL Ido I haven't read the OP. Hold on a sec...

kew - iirc, when dd1 was born, the back to sleep campaign was about a year old.

I remember the HV telling me all about it, giving me statistics for the number of babies that had died from cot death the year before they started the campaign, and I remember her asking me to guess how many had died in our local area since the campaign began.

The answer was none.

I also remember her telling me that nobody knew how it worked, or why, but the fact that not a single baby had died (in our area, in that year) was enough for her to recommend it. Which implies that the research was not particularly robust - just that it seemed to work.

If I listened to all advice given I would be in a terrible mess...what I don't like about the FSID advice is that it is making a definite causal link between dummy use and SIDS prevention when there is little evidence that there is this definite link.