Bed-Sharing Can Be Risky for Babies

(HealthScout) -- Infants may be more likely to die in their sleep if they share a bed with their mom, claims a new study.

That's especially true, the researchers say, if the mother was heavy when she gave birth.

"You're competing for space in a bed, and the larger you are, the less space there is for the baby," says lead researcher Cindie Carroll-Pankhurst, a senior research associate at the Center for Public Sector Leadership and Service at Case Western Reserve University. The bed already contains pillows, blankets and a much softer mattress than what you'd find in a baby's crib, she says. Add to that large breasts, plump arms. "There are lots of soft things that could obstruct the baby's airway," Carroll-Pankhurst says.

Babies who shared beds with mothers who had weighed more than 175 pounds before giving birth died significantly younger than other babies who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the study says.

The researchers focused on 84 inner-city mothers, mostly black and poor, whose babies had died. The 30 babies who had shared a bed with their mothers died at an average age of 9.1 weeks, compared with an average age of 12.7 weeks for the 54 babies who did not share a bed.

That gives rise to the possibility that the babies died of suffocation, not SIDS at all, Carroll-Pankhurst says.

SIDS is the leading cause of death for babies older than 1 month and is listed as the cause of death for more than 3,000 babies each year in the United States. The cause of death is listed by default, meaning babies are said to die of SIDS when no other cause can be found.

But Dr. Carl E. Hunt, a leading SIDS researcher and director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research, says the study leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Race, ethnicity, socio-economic status and whether the babies were premature are all factors that could have been involved, but they weren't considered, he says.

It's also not clear, Hunt says, whether babies whose mothers bed-share in order to breast-feed would face the same risks. There's some evidence that these mothers may be more aware of the babies and where they are in the bed, he says.

Nursing moms still may choose to share their beds with their babies, Hunt says, but other mothers might want to err on the side of safety and put their babies to sleep in their cribs.

"I can't think why it wouldn't be preferred," he says.

Younger babies are much more vulnerable to suffocation and trapped airways, Carroll-Pankhurst says, because they are so much less mobile. They can't move their heads or bodies if they find themselves unable to breathe, she says.

Imagine a baby already sleeping on its tummy, she says, with a mother nearby, her arm inadvertently thrown over the baby's back as she sleeps. "He's trapped," she says.

"You don't have to be all the way on top of a baby to cause a problem," Carroll-Pankhurst says.

Adult beds already carry bedding that's considered hazardous for babies: comforters, pillows and soft mattresses. And, in the study, babies who bed-shared with heavier moms died even earlier than those with lighter-weight moms: at an average age of 7.6 weeks vs. 10.3 weeks. Results of the study appear in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The findings are controversial, Carroll-Pankhurst says, in part because so many women want to bed-share to bond with their babies.

"But you can't bond with a baby that's dead," she says.

In addition, she says, the study draws attention to the definition of SIDS itself. If these babies are actually suffocating, SIDS numbers may be much lower nationally than people think, she says, although she believes it can only help to know that.

If the findings are firmly established, she says, researchers could really fix their gaze on the true SIDS deaths.

"Until then," Carroll-Pankhurst says, "we can't really find out what happened to the kid lying on his back in the crib."

For more information on SIDS and how to prevent it, visit the SIDS Alliance or go to KidsHealth, sponsored by the Nemours Foundation.

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