Warning issued about dangers of infant co-sleeping

Date: 8/3/2017

SPRINGFIELD – The unexpected death of any infant is a tragedy. The death of a half-dozen infants in greater Hampden County in a little over six months is a troubling trend.

So said Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni on July 26 when he and doctors from Baystate Medical Center met with the media at the hospital’s Children’s Specialty Center to highlight the issue and remind new parents how to keep their infants safe while sleeping.

“In just the first six or seven months of the year here in Hampden County, we’ve had six infant deaths which we believe have circumstances involving co-sleeping arrangements or asphyxiation-related sleeping arrangements,” Gulluni said. “This is an alarming trend. The average usually per year for the three counties of the Pioneer Valley is about six per year, so we’re already at a place at half-way through the year where we’re meeting the annual average.”

He added three of these co-sleeping related deaths – which occurred outside of Springfield and were reported to his office by the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit – had occurred during the previous two-week period. None of the recent infant deaths warranted investigations as criminal acts, Gulluni said.

Nevertheless, the statistics represent “a sad, sad trend, and we want to educate the public about co-sleeping and co-bedding and the appropriate circumstances for infants to sleep safely,” Gulluni said.

New parents need facts
Dr. Ian Goodman, Pediatric Emergency Department, Baystate Medical Center, told Reminder Publications some new parents might be getting misleading information about infants and sleeping arrangements online.

“The Internet is a great thing, but there’s a lot of information out there that is not medically correct information, that you can make [co-sleeping] a safe event but you can’t make it a safe event,” Goodman said. “You can’t check out ahead of time which infants will more than likely be susceptible to issues [involved in co-sleeping]. If we were, we would be able to warn individual families. All we are able to do is make blanket statements. That why we want everyone to be aware of the safe sleep campaign.”

Dr. Andrew Balder, medical director of Baystate’s Mason Square Health Center, explained to the media co-sleeping presents the potential to disrupt the breathing pattern for certain infants.

“Some babies, unfortunately are programmed, through ways that we don’t fully understand, in ways that may affect their breathing patterns when someone else is too close and the air exchange isn’t perfect, the oxygen and carbon dioxide,” he said.  “Even if you aren’t on top of the child things can happen for a subset of children that interferes with their ability to breathe correctly.”

These infants, he noted, need not be rolled over upon, or compromised in some other fashion for death to occur. Rollover or other types of accidental suffocations can also occur in co-sleeping situations, with equally tragic results, Balder noted.

Goodman said these cases of tragic infant deaths “cross all socioeconomic levels, they occur in all cultures,” making it critically important for all new parents to understand and practice good sleep hygiene for infants.

Follow the A-B-C’s
    Balder said the safest way for a child under 12 months of age to sleep is the A-B-C method:
    Alone
    On your Back
    In a Crib

The baby can be swaddled, but there shouldn’t be toys, pillows, loose sheets or blankets, bumpers or other materials that might present a suffocation hazard in the crib with the child, Balder added.

The crib, he said, should be placed as close to the parent’s bed as possible in the early months.

“If you are nursing, bring the child to bed, nurse the child, and bring him [or her] back to the crib,” Balder said. Though it may be hard not to fall asleep during those 3 a.m. feedings, and the closeness with the child may be comforting to both, the safest procedure is to get up and put the child back in its own bed.

“No parent sets out to cause harm to their child,” he said. “When parents put their babies to sleep they expect their child to wake up in the morning. They don’t intentionally put their children in places they think are unsafe.”

But the bottom line, Balder indicated, is that co-sleeping with your infant presents a potential danger to your child.