When Karla Roy put her nearly four-month old baby, Kyle, to sleep, she says there were no blankets or padding in his crib.
There were no risk factors for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): Roy breastfed her child and lived in a non-smoking home.
But, one morning Kyle did not wake up.
“SIDS is the sudden death of an infant less than one year of age, which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including the performance of a complete autopsy,” states the Public Health Agency of Canada in the Joint Statement on Safe Sleep: Preventing Sudden Deaths in Canada.
Roy says she never thought SIDS could happen to her child.
“When we realized, I just remembering letting out this blood-curdling scream,” she adds.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is the number one cause of death for healthy infants under the age of one in Canada, according to the Canadian Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths.
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And a recent study suggests that parents who share a bed with their babies under three months old can increase their chances of SIDS by five-fold.
“Bed sharing imposes a risk for a variety of reasons,” says Jamie King, executive director for the Canadian Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths. “Not the least of which you are having infants who are being placed on adult beds which are not designed for infant sleep, mattresses that are quite cushiony and can present some challenges for infants and we’re also talking about parents who are sharing that same sleeping surface and could indeed roll over or sleep on top of their child.”
The study was conducted by a group of researchers led by U.K. based researcher Robert Carpenter. The meta-analysis looked at the home sleeping arrangements of infants in 19 studies across the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia.
The analysis compared bed sharing during the last sleep between babies who died of SIDS and living infants and suggested that 88 per cent of SIDS deaths could be prevented by not bed-sharing.
“Like most maternal-child topics, there is no cut and dry,” says Claudette Leduc, registered midwife at Sages-Femmes Rouge Valley Midwives. “Co-sleeping feels like the right thing for some families and I think care providers roles is to assess the needs of that family and assess the risks for that family and help them make informed decisions for themselves.”
Leduc says more known risks include putting a baby in any other position than their back when sleeping, smoking, use of alcohol, use of drugs or the use of formula bottle feeding.
The Public Health Agency of Canada states infants should be placed on their backs for sleep to reduce the risk of SIDS in the Joint Statement on Safe Sleep: Preventing Sudden Deaths in Canada.
The number of reported SIDS cases in Canada has declined in recent years. In the 1990s, it is estimated there were between 1,500 and 2,500 sudden infant death syndrome cases or sudden unexplained deaths in infancy in Canada.
Now the numbers are thought to be three to four infant deaths a week or up to 200 a year, according to King.
“We did all those right things, he was a breast-fed baby, he was a strong, supposedly healthy baby,” says Roy.
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