US study warns against sharing bed with babies

A new US study which strongly warns against allowing babies to sleep in adult beds repeats recommendations that have been made here for many years, according to an Irish paediatrician.

The practice of adult "co-sharing or bed-sharing" with the newborn or young baby should be avoided, said Prof Tom Matthews, professor of paediatrics at University College, Dublin, and a paediatrician at Temple Street and the Rotunda hospitals.

While there was a low level of risk that the adult might roll on top of the child while sleeping, causing suffocation, there was also an increased risk of death by Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), Prof Matthews said. The message was "don't bed share, particularly if you drink or smoke". "The infant shouldn't be in the bed with an adult unless it is old enough to struggle if lain on."

The US study, by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, will be published in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. It reviewed US data from 1990 to 1997 on the causes of baby deaths linked to lying in adult beds. Of the 515 deaths, 121 were reported to be due to a parent, carer or sibling rolling on top of or against the baby while sleeping. Three quarters of these involved infants younger than three months.

Prof Matthews had helped prepare an information booklet published by the Department of Health which included recommendations against bed-sharing. About 15 per cent of parents here regularly slept with their infants, he said. There was a degree of risk that a baby might be lain over and smothered, but co-sleeping also increased the risk of SIDS.

"There is an excess of SIDS in bed-sharing," he said, particularly where the parents either smoked or drank. There was a 40 per cent increase in SIDS risk with bed-sharing, he said, although the overall risk of SIDS was low and ranged from about one death per 1,000 infants to one death per 10,000 infants.

"It is better not to do it," Prof Matthews said. "The best place for the infant is in a cot with a hardish mattress beside the [parents'] bed." The child should be placed to sleep on its back and all soft bedding and pillow-like items should be removed.

"The two things we would be cautious about is overheating the baby and then if there was any alcohol involved," said Ms Ann Delany, staff midwife at Holles Street. It was fine to bring the baby into bed to feed so long as the child was later placed in the cot.

The study identified four "major hazard patterns" associated with placing an infant in an adult bed: suffocation by the sleeping adult; suffocation when the infant became trapped between the mattress and another object; suffocation due to lying face down on a waterbed; and strangulation in railings or bedframe where the head became entrapped.