Alcohol and Co-Sleeping Affect Risk for SIDS

By LAUREN COX

ABC News Medical Unit

Oct. 14, 2009

Study Unravels Why Bed Sharing Raises SIDS Risk in Some Cases but Not Others

Dave Taylor, a Boulder, Colo. father of three school-age kids, is one of the growing number of people who ignored pediatricians' warnings against bed-sharing as a way to reduce Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS.

I have three kids and they have all survived their babyhood and we co-slept with all three of them," Taylor, author of the Attachment Parenting Blog, APParenting.com, said of his children who are now 12, 9 and 5. "It started out with baby cuddling with mamma and, as they got bigger, they took over the bed. The real issue is room in the bed."

Since the 1990s "Back to Sleep" campaign reduced SIDS deaths by 50 percent, a laundry list of new advisories for parents such as removing pillows or blankets has halved the rate of SIDS once again.

But new research out of England suggests that the risks for SIDS are more nuanced than once thought.

"The findings suggest that much of the risk associated with co-sleeping may be explained by the circumstances in which the SIDS infants were found," Peter S. Blair of the University of Bristol said in a study published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal. . . . . . .

Read More

____________________________________________________________