Did you put your babies to sleep on tummy or back? POLL

amother

↑ Yellow ↓

Today at 12:23 am

Tzutzie wrote:

I always had that fear! So glad your baby os ok!!!! Especially for my second baby who was an expert projectile vomiter!
The doc just told me it's impossible to vomit in your sleep because of many fancy terms. I didn't make sense, but I just had to convince myself it was safe. But she anyways would only actually sleep on me or on her tummy.
After a week of dangerous sleep deprivation. I just put her to sleep on her tummy. Only to be woken 6 hours later HORRIFIED, checking if she's breathing and with 2 feeding rocks. She def vomited in her sleep, and it was all encrusted in her hair. On BOTH sides of her head.... that means she turned in her sleep.

Usually, I put my babies to sleep on their tummies once they outgrew the swaddle. That baby was a whole 'nuther challange. She came out screaming and never stopped since. 😆 gotta lovem!

It's definitely possible to vomit in your sleep! That's why they warn not to let people who are drunk fall asleep on their back. And unfortunately I lost a relative that way, he fell asleep drunk and choked on his vomit. So... yeah.

amother

Ebony ↓

Today at 12:38 am

amother OP wrote:

For those that put to sleep on their tummy, do you just disregard what the medical world advises? Or have you done your own research?

I’m really considering putting my baby to sleep on tummy right away… I don’t want to deal with the endless stress of trying to get baby to sleep for hours on their back only to wake up 7 minutes later, which is my previous experience.

Some of us take medical research seriously. My first few slept in their stomachs 20ish years ago. But when I started to understand the risks I put my younger ones on their backs. Theres no difference between napping and sleeping. Sadly there are way too many SIDS incidents and many happen during nap time. My babies get plenty of tummy time during their waking hours and are usually crawling at 6 months. I'm quite surprised at how many people disregard the very strong correlation between SIDS and sleeping on the stomach.

amother

↑ Yellow

Today at 12:48 am

amother Ebony wrote:

Because many of us feel there isn't a very strong correlation. The most they can say is that around the same time they started pushing the "back to sleep" route, SIDS decreased. But there were so many other factors that changed right around then too. So who's to say this is the correct one or even the main one?

amother

Acacia

Today at 12:54 am

amother Yellow wrote:

Evidence based research is who to say.

amother

↑ Ebony

Today at 12:59 am

amother Yellow wrote:

A drunk adult is very different to a baby. This explains why it's less of a risk on their back for a baby
https://rednose.org.au/article.....-back

chanatron1000

Today at 1:30 am

amother Honey wrote:

Always back. I’d rather a fussy baby than a dead one

But how far do you take that attitude? Are you saying that whenever there's a tradeoff between direct risk of death and the risk (or certainty) of something else, you always choose the lower risk of death?

Because the problem is, if you think about everything that way, you can't live your life.

For example, we all know about the importance of safe car seats. But no car seat reduces the risk of dying in a car crash to zero. That means that it is factually true that every time you put a baby in a car, even if you follow all safety recommendations, you are taking that risk. For that matter, there's a risk as a pedestrian using a stroller too.

I'd rather a child who never leaves home than one who dies in a car accident.

I'd also rather have a child who never eats warm food because there's no stove than a child who chv's dies in a fire, rather a child who has to put up with wearing a helmet 24/7 than a child who dies from a head injury.

But that's not a fair representation of the tradeoff, and it's important to consider the ramifications of depriving babies of the sleep that's so important for their development before we do that in exchange for a marginal reduction in risk.

amother

Glitter

Today at 3:27 am

Sorry this got so long! As you can see, a subject near and dear to my heart.

OP, this is such a tough one. And I think what it boils down to is that there's no 100% safe way to parent a child, and no matter what we do, we'll end up feeling bad about one thing or the other. I'll explain why, but first:

As background, I'm a fully pro-medical science person. I vaccinate my kids on time. And maybe that's partly why I have doubts about this. Because to my understanding, the research isn't sound. Has anyone revisited the evidence in the ~30 years since the study was conducted?

My oldest, I only put her on her back. My OBGYN, who is very much a doctor tyvm, was the first to tell me that she rereviewed the research on Back to sleep and it wasn't sound. And that's why she put her kids to sleep on her belly. Still, I was too scared to do it with mine, so we suffered. She wouldn't sleep more than two hours in a row. I was effectively depressed but it was just extreme sleep deprivation. We saw the sleep experts who said it was too dangerous that I was so sleep deprived because I was picking up my baby in my sleep. They told me my 3mo had to be moved to her own room to prevent this. I did. Eventually she started rolling and that slowly got better.

But she still has trouble sleeping through night until today. Who's to say that wasn't caused by the trauma of being forced on her back and deprived sleep for the first few months of her life? Also, when you look at the back to sleep movement, it's not just about the back. It's a whole list of things. No blankets, no bumpers, sleeping with the baby. But in my situation, I had to remove the baby from the room because back sleeping made it too dangerous for me to sleep near her. So what's more risky? Back sleeping in a different room or belly sleeping in mom's room? I couldn't find a single study analysing this.

Along those lines, my sister was informed by another medical professional that since the back-to-sleep movement started, she'd seen a drastic increase in mothers coming in because they'd dropped their babies who fell asleep on them overnight. So what's more risky?

I don't know the answer.

While I was debating what to do with my oldest, the best answer I got regarding what the study showed was as follows: A certain amount of babies have apnea. We don't know which (or at least we didn't when the study was conducted). All babies sleep better on their tummies. Because they sleep so well, some babies with apnea, when they stop breathing, l"a forget to start again. So the solution is that all babies sleep on their backs. I'm not even sure if this is accurate, but this is what they thought. Some believed, as mentioned in this thread, that there were other reasons rates went down, such as improved medical detection and treatment in utero and postpartum. Still others argue that the total rate of loss didn't even go down as claimed, it's just that many are now reclassified because only losses for unknown reasons are classified as sids. According to this argument, as we learn more, losses are classified for the known cause instead of under the SIDS umbrella.

But let's assume the apnea study was accurate. Even then, it's still very tricky. No one amongst us would deliberately go into a baby's room and wake them up every hour. No one would deliberately cause tremendous belly pain for hours to our precious babies every single day. We would consider that abusive. We would acknowledge that doing this daily to our baby could cause lifelong damage psychologically, emotionally, mentally, maybe physically. But for some babies, this is what back to sleep does. Now I know that many would counter argue that isn't a child with certain issues much more preferable than chv the worst possible outcome? And of course, 100% yes! But this is where the tricky part is. Because if most babies don't have apnea, then is back to sleep lowering their individual risk of anything on an individual level? I think nearly all of us would take this risk if we knew it was lowering the risk of far worse for our babies. But if we think we could be causing damage and it's not actually lowering risk, then it's really difficult to grapple with and suffer through.

Another thing, assuming the apnea study is the logic behind it: this might feel icky to acknowledge, but typically when we make global safety policies, there's a threshold where an inconvenience or danger becomes worthwhile to protect groups of people. Take, for example, seatbelts. Every so often an accident occurs where the seatbelt actually caused the death rather than saved a life. And the policymakers would have known about this when choosing to make seatbelts mandatory. However, they looked at the big picture, saw how many lives saved vs how many lives lost, and figured it was worth making mandatory. And I agree with that. But was the same done with the back-to-sleep movement? Did anyone study the effect of depriving millions of babies of sound sleep to protect a smaller cohort of babies? This feels awful to even write. I'm all for protecting the smaller cohort of babies. But if it's potentially impacting the brain development of more babies, potentially causing ADHD, mental health issues in the parents or babies, creating other dangers like sleep-deprived parents dropping their babies, then this is something that needs to be examined and determined.

And this is a huge issue - I don't see that this study has been revisited for decades. I'd love for someone to do this and publish the results. I'd love for them to answer how they ruled out other factors that could've lowered cod, to address the idea of reclassification making numbers seem smaller, to study whether it causes poor sleep in babies and if so, what risks that presents to both the baby and the parents.

Because a risk-based model needs to account for compensatory actions and other events that occur once the recommended action is implemented. And going back to my example of needing to put my baby to sleep in another room so she could safely sleep on her back, I simply don't see any studies accounting for all that.