Paul R. Knoll, MS

Infant Health and SIDS Prevention

Learn about effective strategies for preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and promoting overall infant health.

View image

Preventing SIDS

Preventing SIDS is crucial for infant health. This article discusses strategies that healthcare professionals recommend for reducing risks.

Prevention Strategies

The known SIDS prevention strategies all have a source of validity under the hypothesis Paul proposes. Here is a short list but not all inclusive:

  • Place your baby on his/her back when putting them down to sleep.
  • Avoid bed sharing with your baby. But place the co-sleeper/bassinet/crib next to your bed so you can attend to your baby during the night. In other words, room-share but do not bed-share.
  • Place a gentle fan in the room to keep the air moving.
  • Keep all blankets and pillows and toys out of your baby’s sleeping area.
  • Make sure your baby’s mattress is firm and flat, not tilted.
  • Use a gentle soap to clean your baby’s mattress and not bleach or anything harsh to sanitize it.
  • When you get to your destination, take your baby out of their car seat. Do not use a car seat as the common place to put your baby.
  • A new advisement is to remove the soiled diapers from your baby’s room to another room in the house, apartment, or to the garage.
  • Breastfeeding out to 6 months is recommended to reduce the risk of SIDS and infections. The more exclusively the better. By this hypothesis, the breastfeeding mother’s blood urea nitrogen (BUN) should be in the normal range. This BUN advisement is not clinically proven as of yet.
  • Do not smoke or be exposed to secondhand smoke or nicotine while pregnant and in your baby’s first year of life, or expose your baby to smoke or nicotine during this time.
  • Get prenatal, neonatal and postnatal checkups for your baby, and for you.
  • And never sleep your baby on a sofa, couch, or recliner; with or without you sleeping with them.
  • Always sleep your baby in a place designated for him/her to sleep, such as a crib, co-sleeper, or bassinet.
  • Your and your baby’s ethnicity does play a factor in the risk for SIDS. But be en-heartened that following the above SIDS risk precautions reduces the risk of losing your baby to SIDS. SIDS and your ethnicity is not a hopeless fact that you have no control over.

Paul has found this article below to be helpful in its list of official reasons why to carry out these SIDS precautions. The article includes some more precautions as well. It has been accessible for free on the Pediatrics website:

Moon, R. Y., Carlin, R. F., & Hand, I. (2022). Technical Report – Evidence Base for 2022 Updated Recommendations for a Safe Infant Sleeping Environment to Reduce the Risk of Sleep-Related Infant Deaths. Pediatrics, 150(1), e2022057991. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2022-057991