Dummies and Cot death

[GingerBearingGifts]

BBC Breakfast - report says that they reduce the risk of SIDS. But also that if you give a baby a dummy, not to take it away again as the risk increases more than for a baby who hasn't had a dummy.
So do we maintain a nightly vigil over the crib to ensure the dummy doesn't fall out?
And what about babies like mine who rejected a dummy outight?

fit - think low birth weight is below 5lbs 8oz.

on the news just now some 'expert' has said that if you forget to put them in one night the baby is at great risk.

well she may be an expert but I think that's utter tosh - babies with a dummy quite often spit them out themselves during the night.

My reason for saying scaremongering is this. New mums are overloaded with information. Every health visitor tells a different thing. There are zillions of mums out there offering different advice. The recommendations change frequently about what your should / should not do. Some mums filter the advice as to what they want, others cannot do that and are overwhelmed and stressed.
Like the original posts - what do you do if your baby rejects a dummy? My DD wont take one. Are we supposed to worry about the fact that we cannot get a dummy in our babies mouths? There is a slight difference between lying babies on their back and them having a dummy in reducing the risk - ie for a while the baby has no choice about sleeping on their back, but from birth they operate the choice of whether to take a dummy or not.

The study authors specifically say that you should not try to force a baby to take a dummy, nor put it back if it falls out at night.
The idea that it may increase risk if you do not use a dummy one night comes from a very tiny statistical inference in two studies NOT this study, nor other larger studies nor the huge study of studies which specificallly rejected the theory iirc. Itt may well be that it is merely a statistical blip - we are not talking about huge numbers of children here and some of the evidence is anecdotal and taken after the death of a child.
Just because you are worried/scared does not mean that information is scaremongering.
The evidence shows that drinking too much (ie not much at all really by my standards) increases my risk of breast cancer. Just because I like to drink wine every evening does mean this valuable health information should be suppressed. It is IMPORTANT to know what causes & prevents SIDS - babies lives depend in it. Do you honestly think it would be better that we didn't know stuff so we could feel more relaxed, even if babies died?
And incidentally, babies do often flip over onto their fronts, doesn't mean the putting them to sleep on their backs advice is wrong.
Cot death is now called SIDS because it doesn't just happen in cots.
And I don't believe that babies don't die in developing countries, I'm afraid.

Totally baffled by this tbh - but hey, sounds like I got something right! (except for poor ds3 who got neither breast nor dummy - astoundingly healthy and bright despite this - wow, look at that!!!!)

Actually there is little evidence to show that breastfeeding is protective against SIDS, which may seem counter-intuitive, but there you are. A couple of studies show a weak association, but more show none at all.
Also, studies show that bed-sharing does not reduce the risk of SIDS, and, particularly in the case of very young babies, may actually increase it substantially.
And I write this as someone who breastfed both babies and spent a lot of time in bed with them.
I do think it is important to realise, as I said before, that co-sleeping in the west - warm rooms, in the same bed, soft bedding etc - is a totally different experience to co-sleeping in developing countries (hard mats, sleeping spread out over the floor, no central heating, pillows, duvets or soft mattresses)

Well I breastfed and had a dummy. I did co sleep sometimes but it just not really for me tbh! My dd happy with dummy and looks like it may actually have been a good thing ! Hate all this snobbishness that surrounds dummies.

Fickin, Lowri Turner irritated me this motning on the Wright stuff about this. She said that dummies nib=nder speech and ar only used to shut children up and then they develope speech problems and can't bable!!! Stupid cow!

HINDER speech!! What happened there!!?

Ha! I saw that too... she is such a PITA.

So is it better to put some plastic or silicon in a baby's mouth rather than a nipple & areola??? is it better to put the baby in cot by itself rather than next to its mother. The world gone mad if you ask me. There are so many health advantages of both bf & co-sleeping - why this isn't better known or practised is a shame. co-sleeping can be done safely in the west!! - it's not all hard mats in other places!!!!!

My dd usually is in with me but still has a dummy.

I still stand by my comments that some mothers will panic at this report. Like I said, if my DD had a dummy and I'd taken it off her this week with her illness, I would have been incredibly upset at the news that I'd increased her risk of cotdeath by taking it away.
It is a small study, IMO things like this should then be done on a large scale and then there is black and white advice, not hmmmm, we're not sure...
Wasn't there a small study done on the link between vitamin K injections and childhood leukemia? I'm not sure if it was published, but the study suggested a link, there was outcry, people stopped letting their babies have the injection and then further studies proved no link.
Turn it around, and if the studies said that dummies increased the risk of cotdeath, but it wasn't a large study, what would your opinions be if you give your baby a dummy?

Lowri Turner may have been out of line, but my goddaughter has got to go to speech therapy due to the way her mouth has formed with using a dummy. NOT my words but the speech therapists.

Anything that can give babies an advantage to survival, no matter how small the advantage, shouldnt be dismissed or ignored imo.

Since the reasons/causes for SIDS are still largely unknown i will follow these recommendations as far as possible until someone comes up with the answers.

I dont believe the BMF or the WHO have any hidden agendas with regard to childcare and recommendations therein.

Studies are just that studies. They tell you something within the confines of the research question (and controls etc that were used). You can't just not report something because it might upset someone. You can't not study something because it might upset someone. A study published last year showed that giving thimerosal to a genetic background something like my sons may well result in autism (lots of assumptions there from the research that was actually done- but it certainly suggested that it was a possibility). Knwoing that I shouldn't have given my son thimerosal didn't make the blindest bit of difference to how I felt about having a severely autistic son. But it did make a difference when it came to decisions to do with ds2 and ds3. If the research has prevented ds2 and ds3 from becoming autistic then great- I would have been hopping mad if the results had been repressed and I had only found out after it was too late for them that thimerosal wasn't likely to be easily excreted from them.

This is just another factor in with all the others to do with SIDS. It wouldn't make me use or not use a dummy, but if I had a child who was using a dummy at night I would probably let them continue for a year or so.

Milward - You're a bit like a stuck record to be honest.... every chance you get you ram it down throats! YAWN!

I agree with Milward! Although I could only manage co-sleeping for the first six weeks or so but I firmly believe it is the easiest (and loveliest) way to get breastfeeding off to a good start.

Am looking forward to taking over the bed in the spare room with new babe in May

I think dummies DO hinder speech but only if they are still being used when children are at talking age and they wear them in the day. Eg when you see children walking around with them in at the park - how on earth do they comment on what they see around them?

and Milward is right - breastfeeding does reduce SIDS so is just as valid an argument as the dummy one

Does it really have to end up a discussion about breastfeeding??????????????

I co-slept with my ds until he was 3. Still failed at breastfeeding and slumped into a depression after I stopped when he was a week old. Co-slept with dd until she was 8mths, stopped breastfeeding her at 5wks coz she wasn't getting enough from me. There.

Don't we all try to do what we think is best?

With so much conflicting information around I find it very hard to know whether I am doing the right thing or not. I co-sleep with my breastfed 5 m.o. at the moment because it was the only way I could settle her in the early days (and I love having her next to me, more selfishly) but some sources think co-sleeping dangerous. She doesn't want a dummy, prefers sucking her fingers. Is she more or less at risk of SIDS than a dummy sucking baby in a cot? I haven't a clue.

Last i heard co-sleeping was dangerous generally because of small babies overheating or suffocating.

I gather the risk is higher in those who smoke and co-sleep and those who have had a few to drink and co-sleep.

ok sackache it didnt work for you but its worth trying to disseminate info to others - not trying to make you feel guilty, honest!

Yeah Enid - But this isnt a debate about breastfeeding! Its about Dummies and CotDeath!

Milward always seems to get right in there with the "everyone should breastfeed so MWAH!" comment!

I don't smoke or drink and am careful about the bedding I use, so I would say we were safe. But you still hear experts warning against co-sleeping regardless of circumstances, which I find confusing.

If we weren't co-sleeping, I might have found it more difficult to breastfeed, which might have impacted on dd2's health too...argh!

I'm just going to carry on doing what I'm doing, I think .