Evidence based decisions reduce stress

Every parent knows the overwhelming feeling of making a decision that could affect the health of their baby. One of the first such experiences is about where they sleep.

Before you leave the hospital with your newborn you’re likely to be warned about SIDS. Horrifying images of walking up to your baby’s bed to find they’re not breathing will terrify you into doing whatever the doctor says. But usually there’s a cost, and the doctor doesn’t tell you.

For our firstborn, the doctor’s recommendation was that he sleep on his back until some number of months (six?). But there was a catch: he had bad reflux and wouldn’t sleep on his back. But he slept great on his belly.

After weeks of attempts to follow the doctor’s instructions we were at an impasse. Risk killing our baby by letting him sleep on his belly? Or keep him on his back and torture everyone with sleeplessness?

So I began to research what we actually know about SIDS. Turns out, not that much. The seminal paper (TODO: reference) shows evidence that back-sleeping does reduce the incidence of SIDS. What you won’t know unless you actually read the paper is that the reduction is very small. As in, back-sleepers had an incident of SIDS (TODO: look up percentage) every 1 in 20000, while belly-sleepers were 1 in 10000. A 50% reduction sounds really big until you realize that there aren’t many who die of SIDS to begin with.

So there it was. We could take a slightly heightened risk of SIDS by letting Graham sleep on his belly. It’s the first of many such risks we’ve let him take for a greater good, namely, coherent parents to care for him.

I was so grateful to see that researchers have finally discovered the primary cause of SIDS. Turns out it has nothing to do with infant sleep position.

Moral of the story: Look up the research for yourself, and decide together on the risks you’ll take as a family. The doctor will give you a black-and-white answer, but your situation is unique and may warrant deviation.