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Family Bed Prevents SIDS

UPI Science News

IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 10, 1996 (UPI) -- Sleeping with your infant may save his life.

In two reports in the journal Sleep Friday, researchers say their studies indicate sharing the bed with mom may safeguard a newborn from sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. They caution the conclusions are theoretical and need to be corroborated by further research.

They speculate that sharing a bed with a parent may prevent the long periods of quiet sleep, known as stage three-fourths sleep, from which a vulnerable infant who experiences long pauses in breathing or a drop in body temperature may have trouble arousing.

Sarah Mosko of the University of California, Irvine, says a baby sleeping next to another person stands a better chance of being awakened. While the cause of SIDS remains unknown, many scientists suspect it involves a baby's inability to wake up when in trouble.

Normally, if breathing stops during sleep, the oxygen-depleted brain arouses the sleeper to get it going again. An arousal deficient person, however, can sleep right through the problem, with deadly consequences.

Studies show siblings of SIDS victims, presumably at higher risk of the syndrome themselves, sleep with fewer interruptions and body movements than do infants with no family history of the disorder. Families also report the SIDS babies are harder to wake up and move less often than healthy ones.

In the study, the scientists found the children who shared beds with their moms had far less deeper stage three-fourths sleep than those who slept alone.

Most of the world's moms sleep with their children. The practice of putting baby in a separate bed and, often, a separate room began in western industrialized societies only some 200 years ago. In the United States, 19 percent of whites, 59 percent of blacks, and 26 percent of Hispanics in New York City and Cleveland report often sleeping with their infants. (Written by UPI Science Writer Lidia Wasowicz in San Francisco)

        Copyright 1997 by United Press International.  
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