– How does co sleeping cause SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)?
In: Biology
Try to sleep next to a big person, you will wake up several times during the night because you will overheat and be thirsty.
Now imagine a 1-3 months old baby in between two whales of parents. Both irradiating heat from 2 sides…
The kid cannot complain or move, he will die of overheating.
Finland has (from memory) the lowest SIDS statistics in the world. This is generally attributed to how Finnish families traditionally encourage their children to sleep on their backs.
Every new family also gets a cardboard box full of (sponsored) baby things, and the empty box doubles as a crib. The baby sleeps in there without anything that could potentially suffocate it, which would not be the case when co-sleeping in their parents bed.
SIDS prevention usually involves a firm mattress with no loose sheets or blankets because the infant can suffocate if they sink into the mattress or get sheets over their face. A typical adult mattress is too soft for this purpose and since your sleeping next to or in between two adults with various sheets, there are loose sheets moving around all of the place creating a risk for SIDS. That’s the theory at least.
Co-sleeping does not cause SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) and shouldn’t be confused with bed sharing which can cause SUID (sudden unexpected infant death).
Co-sleeping is having the baby in a bassinet next to the parent’s bed, close to the parent’s bed or in the same room as the parents. There is evidence that co-sleeping actually helps prevent SIDS because the parent/s can tell if baby is in distress and help them.
Bed sharing, where the baby is in the bed with the parents is not considered safe due to the chance of baby being suffocated by sheets/covers being pulled over them or being suffocated by a parent who rolls over on them. Adult mattresses are generally too soft, not giving baby the support they need. Bed sharing deaths fall under the sudden unexpected infant death(SUID) category.
There was a recent study that may explain why babies die of SIDS, the reason being they lack an enzyme that helps regulate breathing. I’ll try to find it and add in an edit.
Edit: did a bit more reading and the research and science stating there is an explanation for SIDS would appear to be not as clear cut as it’s been reported and there are reasons to doubt the study.
I’ve often wondered if SIDS/SUDI should partially be considered a culture bound syndrome. Asian, especially South Asian, populations (even those living in Western societies) tend to have much much lower incidences of SIDS than European populations despite co-sleeping being a norm.
Very, very recently in the grand scheme of humans, an unbelievable percentage of babies died. No one wants to think about it, but through a variety of interventions and medical science tons and tons of babies who would’ve never made it 100 years ago are comfortably making it to adulthood.
Onto SIDS and co-sleeping; the current advice is to always have babies sleeping on their backs, whereas co-sleeping would generally be on their side or front. Believe it or not, this advice is to keep the baby a little bit uncomfortable. To really dumb it down, SIDS is typically a compromised baby dying in a deep sleep, so we keep them uncomfortable making them more likely to wake up and fight it
The other uncomfortable thing with co-sleeping is if an either drunk, on drugs, or severely sleep deprived parent rolls onto the baby, they might not notice
This isn’t meant to be me on an anti co-sleeping soapbox, just me trying to provide some context. The flip side being a parent might notice a lot quicker if something is off while co-sleeping
Isn’t SIDS specifically caused by lack of an enzyme that rouses babies from sleep? I remember big news around a study a little while ago.
It doesn’t. However people do roll over and suffocate their babies when co-sleeping, especially when high. SIDS is very different.
Noone knows. SIDS is not fully understood and the name SIDS is a tribute to the fact that there is not a clear understanding of what killed the child. That’s why it’s called “Sudden” infant death. It’s sudden, and unexplained.
Cosleeping doesn’t cause SIDS.
Cosleeping increases the risk of suffocation death, but specifically with other risk factors.
In fact, cosleeping (at least while breastfeeding) is associated with reduced risk of SIDS.
the confusion is, I suspect, that no one wants to tell a grieving family that they caused a baby’s death. And it’s easier to eat them believe it was SIDS, than point out that one of them took cold medicine, or had a few beers, or had just gotten off a 20 hour shift, or hadn’t actually gotten around to quitting smoking… …
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Here’s a not very ELI5 article, if you want some science…
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9792691/
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