Comment by lesam
2 years ago
Newer research shows a good chunk of SIDS cases actually _are_ likely suffocation from various causes.
That’s why the SIDS reduction measures are mostly ‘sleep on the back, in an empty crib, with nothing soft around’.
But it’s much easier to tell a grieving parent that there’s nothing they could have done, than that their baby got unlucky and suffocated to death.
You are speaking facts, but it runs into the medical problem of “overdiagnosis” where the treatment can be worse than the disease.
Swaddling the baby and forcing it to sleep on its back, may have a tiny statistical benefit for SIDS, but it causes tons of problems at a time when people are taxed to the limit of their abilities.
We could reduce the incident of breast cancer by removing every woman’s breasts, but that would be an improper risk assessment.
The biggest factor linked to SIDS is poverty, and after that it’s stuff like going to bed while under the influence of drugs and smoking.
And as soon as your baby can turn itself you have no more influence in which position it sleeps anyway.
Well, usually the real risks for co-sleep are in the first month. There are still after, but drops heavily. Past 6 months (or was it 1 year?) I think everything goes off a cliff, you can sleep however you want