The Origins, Prevention and Treatment of Infant Crying and Sleeping Problems: An Evidence-Based Guide for Healthcare Professionals and the Families They Support by Ian St James-Roberts

Author:Ian St James-Roberts [St James-Roberts, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-07-03T04:00:00+00:00

Environmental contributions to infant night waking 2: studies of sleeping arrangements, SIDS and limit-setting care

During the 1980s and 1990s, a simple change in the arrangement of infants’ sleeping environments proved hugely important in reducing the rate of SIDS in countries all over the world. The ‘Back to Sleep’ campaign and studies associated with it showed that putting infants down to sleep on their backs (rather than stomachs) reduced the rate of SIDS by almost 50% (Blair et al., 2009; McKenna, 2005; American Academy of Pediatrics, 2005). In addition, this set of findings provided a highly compelling message about the importance of the external, caretaking environment for infants’ regulation of their physiology. Evidence accumulated that infants often sleep longer and more soundly, and arouse less often, when prone on their stomachs than when supine on their backs, and it seemed likely that some parents become aware of this and put infants down to sleep in a prone position to facilitate sleep, inadvertently increasing the risk of SIDS (R. Horne et al., 2002; van Sleuwen et al., 2007). More recently, attention has shifted to other risk factors, including the possibility that sharing a bed with a parent or parents increases the likelihood of SIDS. This more recent literature is complex, contentious and only partly relevant to our main focus on infant sleeping. We will need to return to it later, since it is clearly vital that any recommendations about parenting methods designed to prevent problematic infant night waking should not increase the risk of SIDS. For the moment, though, the importance of this research into the risks and benefits of bed-sharing has been to provide a rich source of evidence about cultural differences in family sleeping arrangements and their consequences for infant sleep–waking behaviour.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.