|
 At four months of age, nighttime and total sleep duration didn’t
appear different based on whether babies slept in their own room or
their parents’ bedroom, the survey of 230 mothers found. But babies
who did sleep in their own room at this age got an average of 40
minutes more sleep a night by nine months of age than infants who
were room-sharing this entire time.
“We know from prior research that babies experience brief awakenings
overnight regardless of where they sleep,” said lead study author
Dr. Ian Paul, chief of academic general pediatrics at Pennsylvania
State College of Medicine in Hershey.
“Our research suggests that parents respond to these brief
awakenings, which interrupts both parent and child sleep when they
are room-sharing, but not as much when the baby is sleeping in a
separate room,” Paul said by email. “This could set up a cycle where
parents respond to the infant and then the infant grows to expect a
parent response in order to get back to sleep.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that babies
sleep in the same room as their parents for at least the first six
months of their lives, and ideally up to one year, to reduce the
risk of SIDS. The safest place for infant sleep is on a firm surface
such as a crib or bassinet without any soft bedding, bumpers or
pillows – and not in their parents’ bed, the AAP guidelines stress.
Babies rooming with their parents at four months of age were more
than twice as likely to have unsafe objects around them like
blankets or pillows that increase the risk of sleep-related deaths,
the study found. Infants in their parents’ rooms also had more than
four times the odds of sleeping in their parents’ beds, another
practice associated with an increased risk of SIDS.
These findings suggest AAP should reconsider its recommendation of
continued room sharing up to one year of age, the authors conclude
in Pediatrics.
The majority of the babies in the study - 62 percent - were already
sleeping in their own room by four months of age, and another 27
percent of them made this transition by the time they were nine
months old. About 11 percent of babies, however, were still
room-sharing at nine months.
Babies were more likely to sleep in parents’ rooms when the mothers
were single or not living with a partner, had less income or
education, or had less space in their home to give the baby a
separate room.
[to top of second column] |
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove how
babies’ sleep location influences safety or the duration or quality
of sleep.
Beyond its small size, another limitation of the study is that some
mothers were given information on reducing the risk of SIDS and
recommendations on where babies should sleep, the authors note,
though this didn’t appear to influence whether room-sharing
occurred.
Previous studies have linked room-sharing to a reduced risk of SIDS,
which may have to do with babies sleeping more lightly and being
more arousable or waking more easily when their parents are nearby,
said Dr. Rachel Moon, a SIDS researcher at the University of
Virginia and an author of the AAP’s infant sleep recommendations.
“A leading hypothesis in SIDS causation is that failure to arouse
makes the infant more vulnerable to dying from SIDS,” Moon, author
of an editorial accompanying the current study, said by email.
Still, it’s concerning the study found room sharing linked to unsafe
infant sleep practices like bed-sharing and using pillows and
blankets, Moon added.
“Bed-sharing is strongly recommended against and therefore it is
important that a recommended practice (i.e., room-sharing) not lead
to a practice that is associated with greater potential harm (i.e.,
bed-sharing),” Moon said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2qQMnWd Pediatrics, online June 5, 2017.
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
