In the U.S., infant deaths due to accidental strangulation or suffocation in bed have risen dramatically, according to federal health officials.
A detailed examination of death certificates in the nation discovered that the amount of accidental suffocation and strangulation within the first year of infants has increased by 4 times between 1984 and 2004.
Even though these type of tragedies are still rare, the increase has intersected with with a substantial increase in bed-sharing. Bed sharing has recently become more common for helping mothers bond and breast feed.
Infant deaths can happen when a sleeping parent rolls of top of the baby, a pillow obstructs the baby’s face, a blanket becomes wrapped around an infant’s face or neck or when a baby becomes wedged between a mattress and a wall.
Carrie Shapiro-Mendoza of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the leader of the study that will be published in the February issue in the Journal Pediatrics, said that these type of accidental deaths are preventable if babies are given a safe place to sleep.
These results bring forth the first national confirmation to a developing change that officials have suspected in current years. The study discovered that African Americans pose the highest risk.
As a result of this study, many experts are calling for more efforts to persuade parents against sleeping with their babies or putting them in unsafe areas such as a couch.
A national survey done in 2003 indicated that the amount of babies sleeping with a parent or caregiver increased by more than two times between 1993 and 2000. Younger and poorer women living in the South, African Americans and Asian Americans appeared to be the ones who practiced this unsafe habit the most.
John Kattwinkel of the University of Virginia, who chaired an American Academy of Pediatrics panel that was against bed-sharing in 2005, claims that it makes since that there is a link between bed-sharing and strangulation deaths because they are both increasing.
Experts are suggesting that babies sleep in the same room as their parents but in a crib or bassinet that is close to the bed to make breast feeding easier. They stress that babies should have a separate sleep area with a firm mattress, and be put on their backs with no blankets, pillows or other items that might cause suffocation or strangulation.
Bed-sharing supporters have questioned the link between bed-sharing and the increased deaths, suggesting that there could be other explanations. They say that bed-sharing has many advantages, from helping mothers to breast-feed to forming important bonds with their babies.