SIDS guidelines....A question

[MrsO501]

I know that the sids guidelines state that my DS should sleep in the same room as us until he is 6 months and this is what we are doing but i just wanted to ask if anyone knows what it is about being in the same room that decreases the sids risk? Is it that you can hear the baby, or is it something else? If we are asleep and not looking at our DS then why does it make any difference that he is in our room 6 feet away from us? I am confused!

Mine didn't have a choice. We live in an open plan, one bed flat. They had to learn to sleep through noise and lights. What other option would they have

Well, it depends doesn't it. Some learn, some don't. DD2 was nearly 2 and still waking around 5 times a night when we moved to a hosue where she could have her own room. And suddenly she slept better. Obviously that's a bit different to newborns and early evenings, but not all babies do learn to sleep around other people.

BertieBotts it absolutely pissed me off when I read the sleep page. For what it's worth I still hold my giant 10 month old until he goes to sleep regardless!

It's a good point about single parents, parents with more children, parents with partners who work shifts etc. when one child needs you and the baby is fast asleep, I'm sure they get left in a room sometimes.
I didn't have a choice regarding day naps as DS slept lying on me until he was about 8 months :) so being unable to physically do anything away from him for 22 hours of the day meant the 2 hours after DH got home and put DS to bed, I could cook, eat, sit for a bit... It kept me sane. If you have had experience of SIDS then that tragedy would make you have a specific anxiety regarding it which makes you brand other mothers as 'selfish' but the risk is minuscule, and every day you take calculated risks with yor children, and the word 'risk' is so loaded it's hard to separate what's a huge risk and what's practically nothing. It's walking a tightrope. And I still think that the NHS perhaps overstate the sleeping in they same room factor when lying on backs, not smoking etc make as much if not much more difference. And co sleeping is also not recommended but I know people who did both, co slept and stayed in the bedroom with the baby, presumably because they felt one risk was greater than the other, although co sleeping I believe is recommended against. I wonder how many people who have kept to the 6 month guidelines have co slept at least at times? It's just a choice and a risk assessment. I'm not going to call anyone selfish for it.

Bertie only the first para was replying to you btw, the rest is my meandering thoughts!

I've now got three older children (11,8,5) but the middle one had neonatal epilepsy (up to 4 months) and so I heavily monitored her for about a year. (she had no seizures after 4 months, and is now v healthy happy little girl).
One thing I did notice in "the year of no sleep" (actually it was much longer than that before I could relax - not sure I have even now!) was that she sometimes barely breathed at all in a deep sleep. I had a motion sensor under the mattress that detected breathing. It went off once or twice a week. when she was in the crib beside me (for 12 months, I was so worried about her) I once prodded her in the middle of the night to make her breathe. its like she had forgotten to breathe exactly as others have alluded to. she took a huge breathe (like she had been holding it).
I still shudder to this day that I may have avoided something devastating that night. or maybe she was always going to take that deep breath. who knows.
Like others have said - I'd stick to the NICE guidelines if you can, and if it doesn't stop them settling into good sleep patterns. Its all about balance and what works for you in your environment.

Bug - safe co sleeping is recommended. Co sleeping when parents don't follow safe co sleeping advise isn't recommended but followed ie no duvets near face/ not on sofa/ not in between parents it is perfectly safe

Bread sorry if I was unclear-of course i meant not smoking and putting babies to sleep on their backs.

Bugs I found that sleep page utterly irritating too. It seems to have a lot of "it's best to do this..." and "try not to do that.." (namely day/light and rocking/feeding to sleep) when I've never seen any evidence of the harm of feeding to sleep at 3 months. It's not giving you evidence based best practice, it's telling you how to raise your kids.

I think most parents manage risk according to what suits them and their baby. I've never heard anyone say " the risks of car travel are simply too high so my baby won't be doing it". I've heard plenty say they never let the baby sleep alone but also co sleep. I wouldn't dream of calling a parent selfish because they wanted 2 hours a day to be downstairs whilst their baby sleeps.

The SIDS charity says to breastfeed, to use a dummy, and not to co sleep, even safely.

If you don't smoke, and put the baby on their backs, the risks are tiny. In fact he numbers of babies dying of SIDS when they weren't exposed to smoke and slept on their backs must be so small I'm amazed any stats can be done at all.

I agree re risk assessment. To the poster who thinks it's selfish to leave your baby at night for a minute - do you ever take them in a car? That will be a higher risk (assuming you don't smoke and they sleep on their back).

libraries no, not to you specifically. There were a number of comments, from a number of people saying how risk averse and increasing levels of anxiety.

Um Mrs I didn't say you were selfish and that you wouldn't/shouldn't be able to live with yourself, in fact I was quite categorical that it was all about me; my opinion, my interpretation and my inability to not blame myself. That may be an issue or it may not, some people feel responsibility very keenly, others less so.

Unless you're at the extreme of either spectrum (refusing to let your child out of your sight & overbearing interference for years / allowing your two year old to roam the streets, fending for herself), it's probably all good, we all do things a bit differently

Sorry Art but co sleeping is not recommended, or at least not by the NHS or Lullaby trust. They give advice on when it is most definitely not safe, low birth weight, when a parent has had a drink etc and advise on safe co sleeping but their recommendation is still that babies should sleep in a cot.

Nicky - I have spoken to the lullaby trust directly. They say co sleeping is perfectly safe as long as you don't do it if anything on their list applies (drinking/ smoking/ drugs/ pillows and duvets nearby/ overweight/ etc). The NHS says the same.

Last year just over 200 babies in the uk died of sids. 40 of those co slept. Meaning 160+ still died in cots/ car seats/ prams . Of those 40 there is no evidence they also wouldn't have still died if they had been in a cot as will still don't know exactly what causes sids.

onedog - Some of the comments about increasing anxiety were mine.

The thing is, I have no objection is people say "I realise that the difference in risk is very small, but personally I want to X".

It is the seemingly growing societal expectation that you will abandon all semblance of a life for your baby. And that to do otherwise makes you selfish (because how dare any mother weigh her own needs in the balance). The poor OP clearly wants, at some point, her baby to go to bed and have an hour or two by herself. That is perfectly normal and the risk assessment made by probably 99% of the population is that, at some point, before they are six months, they will leave their baby sleeping in another room for some period of time.

If people want to be ultra careful, that's fine. Just like it is fine to decide you'll use a breathing monitor at all times until 12 months. It's just that creating a culture where there is an enormous burden of fear that you are somehow 'risking your baby' if you do otherwise is massively detrimental to maternal mental health. And therefore to babies. And is also just daft.

I do feel freakanomics maybe could do a whole book on childrearing. I suspect the risks we worry about are not the ones that are likely to 'get' us.

"Don't worry about the future
Or know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind
The kind that blindsides you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday"

Wear sunscreen today people! (I realise I am old and many people will not get this reference)

Artandco I think that co sleeping is as low a risk as leaving a baby in a room asleep for two hours, so I wouldn't judge for doing one or the other. The Lullaby Trust page are pretty down on co sleeping EVEN after pointing out the main risks such as smoking, alcohol, covers on the baby ("the safest place for a baby to sleep before 6 months is on their own on their back in a cot or Moses basket") and even say it shouldn't be done if the parent is 'particularly tired' which would have ruled me out for the first 6 months! They make it sound really very risky.
www.lullabytrust.org.uk/bedsharing
My point is that people often put a greater weight on the piece of 'evidence' they feel is the most risky, due to personal experience or circumstance. I don't feel my son was any more 'at risk' for sleeping in his cot for a couple of hours at night without me than he would have been co sleeping, but some people would see them both as unacceptable risk where's some people who are very down on leaving your baby for a seconds also co sleep. There are loads of threads about people saying "why do people co sleep? I'd be too scared etc" as well as loads of these threads where people genuinely feel that leaving a baby alone in a room is dangerous.

Art Then they should put that on their website to reassure parents who co sleep.

Artandco if the Lullaby Trust are telling people directly that its 'perfectly safe' then I'd perhaps suggest to them they change the tone of the advice page then! Because the main point of this thread is how people follow 'guidelines' and the page I read above does seem to be really pushing that do it if you absolutely must buy they think it's much safer not to at all. Again, I've co slept on occasion and the amount of people who do safely means I'm sure that it is AS SAFE as leaving a baby asleep in a room. Which is to say statistically extremely safe. So why follow one and not the other? Personal preference and risk assessment.

The truth is we don't know what causes SIDs - why a baby whose parent did 'everything right' dies whilst the one born to a junky who chains smokes whilst bottle feeding doesn't.
All you can do is reduce the risks as much as feasible. But you also have to get on with your life. And look after your mental health.

With what we know, no parent can EVER be considered 'to blame' or should feel guilty for a SIDs death. There could be a number of causes, the same effect but different reasons and they might be unrelated. We just don't know.
The evidence of how to reduce risks as said up thread is correlation not a cause - it could purely be a coincidence, other factors just not being taken into account because we don't know they are important.
The back sleeping does seem to be important - and that came to light because prior to that the advice was to sleep babies on their front and that coincided with an increase in SIDs. Even smoking which seems clear cut could be due to there being a lot of money for research into smoking and its detrimental effect on health.

Just remember the risk is very tiny ...and no one is perfect and all you can ever do as a parent is your best.

I think the reason they don't is because many people won't follow the 'safe' guidelines and then can blame them directly if something happens. So yes is safe if you do a/b/c. Then people don't follow and take baby in bed after heavy drinking for example as they haven't bought alternate sleeping cot etc. in countries like Japan that co sleep as standard, they don't even have a word for sids as its so rare

Artandco I'm not arguing against the safety of co sleeping, this isn't a thread about to co sleep or not. I'm arguing that in the case of people wanting to follow what the NHS/Lullaby trust guidelines on SIDS risk reduction say to the letter would not, after reading that page, come away thinking it's perfectly safe to go aleep and not a factor in SIDS. They baldly state the safest place for a baby to sleep is in a cot alone, regardless of the listed alcohol/smoking/drugs issue. Like I sais they say not to do it if you are tired FFSs! If you were of a mind to follow guidelines to the letter, you would come away thinking 'I won't do that, it's clearly not as safe'. If you followed the sleeping in same room advice, but co slept, you would presumably then be co sleeping on the basis that it's not 'as safe' as sleeping in a cot, according to the same people's advice you are following rigidly with regards to sleeping in the same room. So you are quite rightly excercising your risk assessed choices and following your own parental instinct in that case.

That is a typo nightmare, I apologise!

If he wouldn't settle in the living room I would have gone into the bedroom... as I did sometimes, as I say, not really much of a hardship imo

Woah... bottle feeding is in the same category as being a junky or smoking around your child? I think this just shows how broad people's opinions are.

Also it isn't martyrdom if you don't mind doing it

Oh for goodness sake. I specifically excluded those who said that they personally wanted to do something. But actually the definition of martyrdom isn't about desire, it's about self sacrifice for an ideal - www.thefreedictionary.com/martyr

What I am sick of is the continuing judgement and one-up manship about how perfect one mother can be compared to another. Which generally involves competitive martyrdom.

It is the lectures about how you are selfish that get my goat.

purple - no it isn't and sorry if it came across that way ...I'm not anti bottle feeding at all ...honestly.
The only point I was making is that people do things that aren't religiously following all the guidelines -I could have made a list - and don't suffer a SIDs loss - whilst others who have done absolutely everything to minimise risk do. And we don't know why that is.
So parents in that situation who have been doing their best - whatever that is - shouldn't feel guilty and feel to blame because even if there was something 'obvious' (like smoking or putting to sleep on the front) that might not be -in fact can't be - the only reason.

bigkids You're right. SIDS is now so rare it's not possible to do any further studies. So we will have the same arguments until the end of time about the causes and whether we can isolate various factors etc.

The sad fact is that one in every 2000 babies will die in their sleep and we will never know why. Why did my friend's child get cancer? We don't know that either. It is sickening. Science, wonderful though it is, can never eliminate this random chance that something devastating will happen. We should stop kidding ourselves that if we follow a magical formula we can eliminate all of it. We can't.