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

amother

↑ Khaki

Today at 9:17 am

amother Thistle wrote:

Ca you link the mattress wrapper? Can’t find any for a bassinet.

I bought it over 15 years ago, don't think they still make the one I bought. It was basically a thick plastic bag that covered the mattress, which I then put cotton towels oner to make it softer and covered with a crib sheet.

amother

↑ Yellow ↓

Today at 9:24 am

amother OP wrote:

A lot of you said you put babies to sleep on their backs for the first month and then switch to tummy. I don’t understand how that helps reduce the risk of SIDS. Having stronger neck muscles doesn’t reduce the risk of SIDS…

So I’m not understanding the connection or the reason for this.

The stronger neck muscles was to ensure the baby can turn their head side to side as needed to breath, and won't smother with their face to the mattress. Otherwise they might have put the baby to sleep on their stomach from the beginning, they just waited to make sure the baby will be able to move their head as needed.

amother

Crocus ↓

Today at 9:59 am

I started out with my first trying to put her to sleep on her back and she was so so so miserable I ended up sitting on the floor with her in the middle of the night. We were both constantly in tears. It was really not ok. After talking to my mother and husband we decided to switch to putting her on her belly. She started to actually sleep at night and we were both much happier. After that with my other kids I put them on their bellies from the beginning.

There are always tradeoffs between health and safety. Most things that are healthy for us come with some level of risk. If you do the research you see that there is actually good reason for babies to sleep on their bellies. Their development in almost every category is better with better quality of sleep. When babies are put to sleep on their backs they keep startling themselves awake. There's a reason every single culture around the world pretty much puts babies to sleep on their bellies. If you want more data on this you can read the book Cribsheet by Emily Oster. She's fantastic.

amother

Crystal

Today at 10:06 am

amother Yellow wrote:

When the baby is fast asleep and not getting enough oxygen due to stomach sleeping, it won’t feel the need to lift or turn its head.
My close friend, an experienced mom of many, lost a baby to sids. What works for lots of babies might not work one single night. That’s all it takes.

amother

↑ Yellow

Today at 10:17 am

amother Crystal wrote:

But that can apply to so many things in life. Every choice you make when raising a child (or simply living life yourself) can also end in disaster. Breastfeeding lowers the risks of so many things and yet nobody these days will insist that the only way you should be feeding your baby is through breastfeeding, they'll say that they highly promote it for a variety of reasons but if it's not the best choice for your baby, feed another way. Back sleeping might be (ostensibly) better in this area but a lot worse in others, and even if you do put a baby on their back they can still die from SIDS l'a, it's not 100% guarantee. If you search, you'll find so many different people putting forth so many different ideas of why SIDS occurs. Sleep apnea was just one idea. Another mentioned on the thread was bad gases released by mattresses that have flame retardants etc in them. Someone else said it's vaccine-related. And there are many more. Do you specifically know for sure which reason is really the right one? What if someone puts their kid on their back to address the apnea thing and it's really the gas thing and their kid RL dies anyway? There are unfortunately no certainties in life. The only thing really is that at the same time they started promoting back to sleep, SIDS went down, but a lot of other things changed at that same time, so how can anyone say that it's for sure the "back to sleep" factor that saved these babies and not any of the other many factors that changed?

Chayalle

Today at 10:21 am

I put my kids to sleep on their tummy from the get-go, but I have very agile kids with very good tone (my DD was lifting her head in the hospital - all the nurses commented to me on it.)
My mother AH had 12 of us and we all slept on our tummy back in the day....but as I said, our family tends to have small babies with strong reflexes.....

amother

↑ Aster

Today at 10:21 am

ChossidMom wrote:

They made us crazy with the whole issue of not putting them on their tummies because of SIDS. We listened for a while and went back to tummy. Today I understand that SIDS has more to do with vaccines and less to do with which side the baby lies on.

Here we go, I was waiting for this gem!

SIDS was a thing long before vaccines, and many unvaccinated babies died from SIDS.

Actually, my unvaccinated neighbor died from cancer.

amother

Hotpink ↓

Today at 10:56 am

amother Mint wrote:

Yes. They're required to say back to sleep.
I always put my kids on tummy. If your nervous you can try side but if you research you'll see most of the theories regarding back to sleep being a danger don't have solid proof.
They say sids rate significantly decreased when baby's were put to sleep on their back. However, at the same time in utero testing increased so there was a higher percentage of sick baby's that were able to be treated based on in utero findings.
There is also the danger of a baby choking on spit up when sleeping on their back. But for some reason that gets pushed to the back burner

The trachea lies above the esophagus when a person is on their back. At the volumes most infants spit up, they’re safer being on their back, because what they don’t cough out will pool at the back of their throat and go back down the esophagus. If they’re on their belly, that residual can trickle into the trachea and put them at risk for aspiration and aspirational pneumonia.

amother

↑ Hotpink ↓

Today at 11:12 am

Both of mine slept on their backs until they could roll, however one slept in a mamaroo at first (NICU baby with reflux - he got used to it in the hospital) and then they both slept in a snuggleme until showing signs of rolling, which is not strictly “safe sleep.”

Unfortunately the frequent wakeups is part of why back sleep is a protective factor against SIDS. The current working theory for true SIDS (so excluding positional asphyxia, strangulation, crush deaths, etc) is that it’s caused by the baby falling too deeply asleep and being unable to rouse themselves when something like an apnea or rebreathing happens. So the current recommendations of back to sleep, pacifier use, and room sharing with parents are all things that help prevent babies from sleeping too deeply. Which is obviously important to keep babies safe but also extremely hard on parents. Back sleep also has the additional benefit of keeping their airways clear of reflux/secretions and of allowing their own Co2 to dissipate and lessen the risk of rebreathing.

OP if you’re worried, but want the flexibility to have a little wiggle room on safe sleep, you could look into the owlet dream sock or masimo stork. Both are FDA cleared for healthy kids and can alert you to an apnea episode or drop in oxygen saturations. Obviously don’t pile blankets on or let baby sleep in a squishy mattress or anything, but I find I’m much less stressed about mine sleeping in the doona or mamaroo or even my own bed when he’s wearing it.

amother

↑ Crocus ↓

Today at 11:21 am

amother Hotpink wrote:

Unfortunately the frequent wakeups is part of why back sleep is a protective factor against SIDS. The current working theory for true SIDS (so excluding positional asphyxia, strangulation, crush deaths, etc) is that it’s caused by the baby falling too deeply asleep and being unable to rouse themselves when something like an apnea or rebreathing happens. So the current recommendations of back to sleep, pacifier use, and room sharing with parents are all things that help prevent babies from sleeping too deeply. Which is obviously important to keep babies safe but also extremely hard on parents.

Not only hard on parents but also impairs baby's development. We all know how well we function on poor sleep. Babies are no different. It's possible that elderly people dying in their sleep would happen at lower rates if their beds shook them to wake them up every single hour. There are tradeoffs between health and safety. We really have to think long and hard about impacting the health of every single baby for a slight reduction in risk.

↑ giftedmom

Today at 12:20 pm

There literally isn’t a shred of evidence that tummy sleep causes a lack of oxygen. Not a shred. Not a study. Nothing. They cannot prove that a single baby who died from SIDS died from being on their tummy (many of them weren’t on their tummy). They also don’t actually know how many babies sleep on their tummies as many parents lie so even the correlation argument is weak. I’m a very cautious parent but things do need to make sense to me.

amother

↑ Hotpink ↓

Today at 1:17 pm

giftedmom wrote:

Here are 9 that I found in the last 20 minutes.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8229475/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12671147/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8627432/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30605404/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29177808/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8501562/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11228267/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16818554/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12173990/

amother

↑ Hotpink

Today at 1:46 pm

amother Crocus wrote:

I think that’s a jump given that 1) babies most at risk of Sid’s are under 6 months and naturally have pretty fragmented sleep. 2) it’s by no means a slight reduction in risk. Depending on the study, between 60 and 90% of SIDS victims are found sleeping prone. Would sleeping on their back necessarily have saved all of them? Probably not. But if it could have saved half? I think we can almost universally agree that a baby who crawls late is better than a dead baby.

amother

↑ Crocus

Today at 1:55 pm

amother Hotpink wrote:

1) Their sleep is fragmented enough already. Don't make it worse.

2) Who says I was talking about crawling? There's a ton of other things babies are supposed to be learning at that point in time (especially in sleep area which I can imagine sleep would impact the most)

3) Most SIDS babies that were found on their stomachs weren't generally put to sleep on their stomachs. Look through the data carefully. Many were actually prone on a sofa, not their crib. Not likely that planning for sleeping on their back would even save 1/3 of them since that was the normal plan for these babies.

All of this is even ignoring the rise in PPD that happened at the same time as back to sleep campaign. Mothers who aren't sleeping get depressed at far higher rates. This even impacts maternal mortality. Do their lives not matter? I'm not saying every mother of a baby sleeping on the back gets depressed but the rates of babies dying from prone position is actually way lower than the maternal suicide rate.