Washington – To minimize the risk of crib death, the nation’s largest organization of pediatricians is recommending that babies be put to sleep with pacifiers and in their own beds, despite intense opposition from advocates for breast-feeding and the “family bed.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics, hoping to settle some of the most hotly debated, emotional issues related to the care of newborns, is for the first time endorsing routine pacifier use and explicitly advocating a ban on babies sleeping with their parents.
In an eagerly awaited set of recommendations being unveiled today, the academy’s first new guidance in five years also toughens its long-standing policy that babies always sleep on their backs, saying for the first time that even sleeping on the side is too dangerous.
Babies should, however, sleep in the same room as their parents, the academy concludes.
The recommendations come as more and more American women are juggling the competing demands of work and motherhood, leading increasing numbers of new mothers to sleep with their babies in what some advocates call the “family bed” as they search for additional time to bond with their newborns.
But an expert committee convened by the academy concluded that the new recommendations are necessary to save more infants from crib death, known formally as sudden infant death syndrome. Although the number of babies dying mysteriously in the first few months of life has plummeted in the past decade, recent statistics show the decline has flattened at about 2,500 U.S. deaths a year.
While praised by SIDS activists and other pediatricians, the guidance to parents, grandparents, babysitters, day-care centers and other caregivers drew criticism from proponents of breast-feeding and bed sharing. The evidence that pacifiers are helpful and bed sharing is dangerous is far from conclusive, they said, and the recommendations will hinder breast-feeding and mother-child bonding, which are clearly highly beneficial.
