As studies find the practice of shared sleep spaces continues, a neonatologist highlights other SIDS/SUID risk factors that parents can influence
Amid the collection of first baths, first smiles and first steps, many baby photo albums include a classic shot of Mom or Dad asleep on the couch, baby curled up on their chest. While heartwarming and common, the photos (often shared on social media) raise a red flag for neonatologist Sunah (Susan) Hwang, MD, MPH, PhD.
Hwang, whose premature patients are up to four times more likely than full-term babies to succumb to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), educates families and studies ways to reach more parents with the life-saving messages that pediatricians know work.
Rates of SIDS (deaths in infants under 1 with no known cause following an investigation) plummeted by over half after a 1990s safe sleep campaign. "We consider that one of the greatest success stories of maternal and infant public health," Hwang said of the research-backed campaign that advised back sleeping in otherwise empty cribs for the nation's babies.
"Yet the numbers have plateaued," she said. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were, in 2022, about 3,700 sudden unidentified infant deaths (SUID) - an umbrella classification that includes SIDS and accidental suffocation or strangulation in bed. "There has been no decline in rates in over 20 years," said Hwang, associate professor of neonatology-pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Recent data have raised experts' concerns about co-sleeping. After analyzing nearly 7,600 U.S. SUID cases from 2011 to 2020, the CDC found that almost 60% of those deaths occurred in shared sleep spaces. Of those, 75% were in an adult bed. "Co-sleeping is any area where there is a caregiver/adult and the infant in the same sleep space," Hwang said.
Hwang shared more about SIDS/SUID and co-sleeping in the following Q&A.
