Using a fan may decrease risk of SIDS
October 7, 2008 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Women's Health
If your baby’s room isn’t well ventilated, using a fan may help decrease the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
When my children were born, in 1987, 89, and 91, most of us put our babies on their stomach. When my kids were newborns, I put them on their side and then as they got older, on their stomach. For my first one, especially, it was the only way he would sleep and – it made sense to me because lying on your back can make you feel exposed. At least, that’s how I thought about it.
In 1994, there began a campaign for parents and caregivers to place their babies on their back to sleep rather than on the side or stomach. Research had been showing that babies who slept on their stomach or who rolled from their side to the stomach had a higher risk of dying of SIDS. It’s amazing how the school of thought changed so quickly and when my children were toddlers and in elementary school, I would see posters at the pediatrician’s office with the Back to Sleep slogan. I remember feeling really badly for parents who lost their babies to SIDS and who had put them on their stomach.
Click here to read more about newer findings.
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Image: MorgueFile.com
Tags: pregnancy blog, SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, back to sleep
That’s interesting to read about for sure, but it makes me wonder about something else I read about. Over at Baby Center in the Dec. 2008 club (my due date club), someone had started a thread on mattress wrapping.
There’s a theory out there that the fumes given off by new mattresses are one of the underlying causes of SIDS. Which is why the sleeping on the back has helped so much. The infant is getting better ventilation away from the fumes by being faced away from the mattress rather than directly next to it. I would venture to guess that having something over the head while being face down would only make fumes it worse.
So there are some people out there who practice mattress wrapping as a way to keep the fumes away.
The fan for ventilation theory holds with the mattress theory according to logic. Better air circulation would be a good thing.