How Old Can Babies Be Before Sleeping on Their Stomach
Story highlights
- Baby sleep is best if you play loud, rumbly white noise during all naps and nights
- An unswaddled infant can gyre to an unsafe position more than easily than a swaddled ane
(CNN)We need more grooming to get a driver'south license than to get a parent, in our culture. Even though we would do good from parental pedagogy, some of united states of america have never even held a newborn before having one of our ain. And we often rely on advice from friends and family, much of it outdated or just evidently wrong.
When it comes to baby sleep, bad advice tin can be dangerous. October is Condom Sleep Awareness month, an opportunity to learn more than about sudden unexpected babe decease and debunk the myths about what is sabotaging your sleep and highlight habits that potentially gamble your babe'south safety.
Myth ane: Your infant sleeps best in a silent room.
Not true. In fact, total silence can make it difficult for your baby to doze off. Call back, the womb is noisy: louder than a vacuum cleaner and running 24 hours a day. For 9 months, your fiddling one's been lulled to slumber by the rhythmic whooshing of the blood flowing through the placenta. To her, the quiet of the average home is jarring. Plus, in a silent room, she's more likely to wake upwardly when a loud truck on the street or any other bump in the night breaks that silence. The truth is, your baby volition slumber best if yous play loud, rumbly white racket during all naps and nights.
Myth 2: You lot should never wake a sleeping baby.
Nope. You should always wake your sleeping baby using a little technique chosen "wake and sleep." Information technology gently teaches your kid the of import skill of self-soothing. Here'southward briefly how it works: Starting every bit early on as the offset day of life, wake him up the tiniest flake later sliding him into bed. Only tickle his cervix or feet until his eyes drowsily open. Very soon after, he'll drift right back into slumberland. In those few semi-awake seconds, he's only soothed himself back to sleep -- the first step toward sleeping through the night.
Myth 3: Some babies sleep worse when swaddled because they want to exist free.
Non really. Your babe may fuss and resist swaddling at first, and so it may look similar she hates information technology. But babies don't need freedom, they need the feeling of security they had in the womb. Without wrapping, your infant will flail her artillery, whack herself in the face and startle easily throughout the night. That's a recipe for poor sleep.
Swaddling is the first stride to calming, and it's important you don't terminate in that location, specially if your infant's been fighting it. To help her settle, you'll want to layer in other womb-mimicking steps: "shushing," side/stomach position, swinging and sucking, which, along with swaddling, make upwardly the 5 S's of setting up a infant for sleep success. And in one case the S'south become part of your sleep routine, she'll give up her battle! (Notation: Side/tum position is for calming but, never for sleep.)
Myth four: We should teach babies to sleep in their ain rooms.
Having our babies grow up to exist independent takes a long fourth dimension. At that place's no need to blitz it. In fact, having your new kid slumber in another room is inconvenient (for feedings and diaper changes) and possibly unsafe. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies sleep in the parent's room for at to the lowest degree six months (always on their back, in their own bed). The uncomplicated practice has shown to significantly reduce the rate of sudden baby death syndrome.
Myth 5: Swaddling should be stopped after two months.
Swaddling reduces crying and increases sleep. But new enquiry shows that swaddled babies who roll to the stomach accept double the risk of SIDS compared with an unswaddled baby rolling over. As a result, the pediatrics academy is now recommending that parents stop baby-wrapping at 2 months. On the confront of it, the group'due south new communication seems to make sense, but it completely ignores the risks of not swaddling.
In an eight-year review of data collected past the Consumer Product Safety Commission, only 22 sudden unexplained babe deaths related to swaddling were reported; near 50% were in sleep sacks (a clothing blanket), and ninety% were constitute on the stomach and/or with bulky bedding. (Annotation: Fatalities categorized every bit sudden unexplained baby death include sleep deaths from adventitious suffocation, strangulation and SIDS.)
During those eight years, hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- of babies were swaddled. Since sudden unexplained infant death strikes i in 1,200 babies, one would have expected hundreds or perhaps thousands of swaddle-related deaths over this menstruation if wrapping caused these deaths. Of note, during the aforementioned eight years, 1,026 deaths related to sofa sleeping were reported to the safe commission.
The point is, though swaddling may introduce a theoretical risk, there is not a lot of proof information technology is causing a true increment in sudden unexplained babe death. On the other hand, swaddling has been shown to reduce infant crying and boost sleep. That is of critical importance because the stress provoked by persistent fussing and parental exhaustion is a potent trigger for postpartum depression, child abuse, car accidents and even risky sleeping practices, which are associated with up to lxx% of all babe sleep fatalities.
We don't want babies rolling over swaddled, but we also don't want them rolling over unswaddled during the 2- to 4-calendar month-old peak menstruation for SIDS. An unswaddled baby can scroll to an dangerous position more easily than ane whose movement is restricted by snug swaddling. And, since swaddling improves sleep, unwrapped babies wake more often and are more likely to tempt their tired parents to fall asleep with them in their beds.
To solve this tricky problem, I assembled a team of MIT-trained engineers and renowned industrial designer Yves Behar to invent a type of swaddle that keeps sleeping babies safely on the back. In Oct 2016, my company Happiest Babe debuted Snoo, the world's first responsive bassinet that employs this special swaddle, which clips to the base of the bed to prevent rolling. This innovation allows parents to reap the substantial benefits of swaddling for a total six months without whatever of the risks.
Myth 6: Putting babies to sleep on the back has solved SIDS.
The National Institute of Health-led Dorsum to Sleep campaign quickly reduced sleep deaths from 5,500 in 1994 to 3,500 in 1999. Yet, for the past 17 years, progress has completely stalled. The tragic truth is that three,500 infants dice during their sleep each and ever year. Although more babies are sleeping on the dorsum, the rate of accidental suffocation and strangulation infant deaths has quadrupled since the mid-1990s. What's backside this alarming tendency? Unsafe sleeping practices. Seventy percent of all sudden unexplained baby death victims are plant in adult beds, sofas and other risky locations.
A contempo report revealed that while most parents fully plan to follow the ABCs of rubber slumber (Alone, on the Back, in a Crib), less than one-half actually practise it. And by the terminate of the night, virtually 60% of babies have migrated from their bassinet to their parents' bed, co-ordinate to a study in the Journal of Clinical Lactation.
The terrible, unintended consequence of the Back to Sleep campaign is that information technology has worsened baby sleep. Babies just don't sleep well on their backs in still, quiet cribs. And as discussed in myth 5, when babies don't sleep well, parents resort to bed-sharing, which leads to many more babe suffocation deaths.
Information technology is very important that parents continue to place their babies to slumber on the back, simply they also need to start using more than tools to improve their child's slumber. The practiced news is that there are three effective ways to heave slumber for back-sleeping babies: sound, swaddling and rocking.
Rumbly white noise is inexpensive and very constructive for improving a baby's sleep. Snug swaddling is besides, simply as explained to a higher place, pediatricians now recommend that parents end wrapping at 2 months quondam. Movement, or swinging, is also cracking, but the American Academy of Pediatrics has institute that sleeping in sitting devices, such every bit rockers and swings, may allow a babe's caput to ringlet forward and cause adventitious suffocation and death.
These are issues we sought to address with the Snoo bed. It allows for safe swinging (it is totally flat), safe swaddling (the baby tin't whorl over) and safe sound, as the sound increases when a baby cries but and so immediately softens -- after the babe calms -- for all-dark slumber promotion. We designed it to deliver the right level of womb-like stimulation that is right for whatsoever particular babe to at-home his or her fussing and boost sleep.
For most twenty years, despite enormous public health educational programs, we have failed to reduce infant sleep death. But, past focusing on sleep efficacy (boosting a baby's slumber), we now have a very exciting ways to prevent many -- if not well-nigh -- of these deaths. And as a health bonus, improving slumber efficacy may also allow us to reduce other serious and unsolved health problems triggered by exhaustion and crying, such as postpartum low (with almost a half million cases diagnosed a year) and shaken-infant syndrome (1,300 incidents a twelvemonth).
Please join me in October -- and all year long -- past telling new parents about exhaustion'due south role in sudden unexplained infant death and by sharing the slumber-boosting tips mentioned here. I am confident that we volition dramatically improve the health of American parents and babies equally we put more free energy and emphasis on helping parents promote amend infant sleep.
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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/30/health/baby-sleep-myths/index.html
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