Caring for a newborn is exhausting work. The deep hours of the night can be the worst. Your baby cries and cries no matter what you do. All you want to do is sleep. And it’s so easy to curl up with your baby next to you in bed. Often, she’ll finally fall fast asleep.
In an instant, this placid scene can turn tragic. So far this new year, five babies have suffocated while sleeping. The numbers are so startling that Attorney General Janet Mills and Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Mark Flomenbaum sent out a news release last week to draw attention to the dangers of co-sleeping.
“Please, please, do not have your infant sleep with you. Each child is a precious and fragile being and should be treated with great care,” Mills said.
All of the deaths were deemed accidental, and no evidence of alcohol or drug use was found. Four of the babies died while co-sleeping — sharing a bed with an adult. One death resulted from an “inappropriate sleep environment,” according to the attorney general’s office, which didn’t release further details.
The babies, who ranged in age from 1 to 3½ months, died from positional asphyxia, which can occur when the airway becomes obstructed because of the position of the neck or body.
Each year in Maine, 10 to 15 babies die due to unsafe sleeping conditions, according to data from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
A July 2014 study published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics looked at more than 8,200 sleep-related infant deaths reported in 24 states between 2004 and 2012. In nearly 74 percent of the deaths of babies 3 months old or younger, the babies were sleeping on a surface (usually a bed) with an adult.
“Infants at this age [birth to 3 months] do not yet have the motor ability or strength to move their head or reposition their body when in an asphyxiating environment, such as when another person rolls over or moves such that part of the adult’s body obstructs the infant’s airway,” wrote the study’s authors, led by Jeffrey Colvin of Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, Missouri.
Another study, published in 2013 in the British journal BMJ Open, looked at bed-sharing risks for infants 3 months and younger who were breastfed and had nonsmoking parents. The researchers, from Europe and New Zealand, found a five-fold increase in infant deaths associated with bed sharing.
That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics warns against sharing a bed or couch with an infant. The safest place for babies to sleep is in a crib or bassinet in the same room as their parents, the academy has said for decades. Infants also should sleep on their backs without stuffed animals, pillows or other items that can stifle breathing.
“I have never before seen such numbers in my 23-year-long career,” Flomenbaum said in the release. “These tragedies are easily preventable. Whether it is a desire to snuggle in cold weather or to comfort or be comforted by the infant, it is false comfort when the adult falls asleep and accidentally asphyxiates that tiny child.”
To best protect all precious and fragile babies, follow the simple advice of having them sleep on their backs, wrapped in a blanket, in the safety of a crib or bassinet.
