Safe Sleeping for Infants
The decision on where a new baby should sleep is a personal choice that every family needs to make for themselves. When making this important decision they need to consider:
- infant feeding practices (breast feeding vs. bottle feeding)
- their values
- their behaviours
- the health of the baby
- recommendations of professionals
Both the Canadian Paediatric Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that the safest place for your baby to sleep is in a crib in your room for the first six months. Furthermore, this sleeping arrangement can decrease the risk of Sudden Unexplained Infant Death (SUID).
Bed sharing (when the infant sleeps on the same surface as his/her parents) may be linked with hazardous sleeping environments (such as suffocation, overlying, exposure to cigarette smoke, and circumstances in which alcohol, drugs or medication alter the physical or mental state of the caregiver) which ultimately places infants at the risk of SUID.
Room sharing (when the infant sleeps in the same room as his/her parents, but not on the same sleeping surface) is often proposed as a safer alternative to bed sharing, and the Foundation for the Study of Infant Death recommends that infants sleep in the same room as their parents for the first six months of life. Room sharing is thought to have many of the same benefits of bed sharing, and reduces the risk of SUID.
For more information on Safe Sleeping, please refer to our on-line Resource Catalogue for resources.
Safe Sleep for Your Baby is available on-line at:
www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/dca-dea/prenatal/sids-eng.php
