HJBR Sep/Oct 2019

50 SEP / OCT 2019 I  Healthcare Journal of BATON ROUGE column PEDIATRIC Catching NewBorn The earliest data on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) goes back to 1988 when the SIDS rate topped out at 1.4 per 1,000 live infant births. In 1992 the Amer- ican Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) began recommending that infants be placed to sleep on their back, and shortly thereafter in 1994, the Back to Sleep campaign was started by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. When this initiative was started, only 13 percent of parents reported placing their baby to sleep on their back. This campaign, which has been highly successful by all measures, has led to the reduction in SIDS by over 50 percent, and now with more than 75 per- cent of babies sleeping on their back. In recent years, the focus of this cam- paign, along with the name, has shifted to the Safe to Sleep campaign, with the goal of further educating caregivers about the other components of a safe sleep envi- ronment. Infants should always sleep on a flat, firmmattress with a single fitted sheet, and without any extra blankets, pillows, or other bedding, such as bumpers. Also of importance is a dedicated sleep space for infants, and any kind of bed sharing with adults, or sleeping on a couch or in a re- cliner with an adult, is strongly discour- aged. Now, let’s get back to those sleep de- prived, well-meaning parents who, some studies suggest, are losing up to two hours of sleep per night in the first three months after the birth of their bundle of joy. Those parents might be searching for something, anything, that could get them extra ZZZs, and a trip down the baby aisle at your local store will show you that many companies are “coming to the rescue” with sleep de- vices for newborns. However, since April 2019, there have been several major recalls by the Consumer Product Safety Commis- sion on common infant sleepers, such as the Fisher-Price Rock-N-Play, after over With a new baby on the way, there is so much advice, both solicited and unsolicited, that parents to-be receive. While all this advice generally comes with the best intentions in the hopes of helping parents prepare for the up- coming arrival of their bundle of joy, I think one thing we often fail to prepare parents for is what sleeping, or lack thereof, can look like for both parents and newborns. I have seen parents in my office who can barely keep their eyes open, the exhaustion and fatigue clearly seen in their weary eyes. As physicians who trained prior to work hour restrictions can testify, sleep depri- vation is not good for anyone. For these new parents who might not be used to getting only one to two hours of sleep at a time, the desire for even just a bit of continuous shut eye can lead to unsafe sleep practices.