Posted on 10/11/2005 5:52:24 AM PDT by gobucks
Todd and Marlena Berkowitz's 6-week-old daughter, Sofia, spits out the pacifier. But the Redwood City family won't force her to suck on one. The AAP is recommending using a pacifier when putting a baby to sleep to reduce the risks of SIDS.
*snip*
Those are two of the most controversial recommendations from the AAP designed to reduce sudden infant death syndrome, the unexplained death of a baby while sleeping.
*snip* The risk of SIDS increases for infants when multiple people share the bed, the AAP said. In its new guidelines released Monday, the AAP encourages parents to sleep in the same room as the baby, allowing them to awaken at the earliest signs of distress. *snip*
Pacifiers, which have come in and out of fashion for babies, might reduce the risk of SIDS by keeping some babies from sleeping too deeply, according to the AAP guidelines.
But pacifiers, like almost everything related to parenting, are controversial, too. Some new parents have avoided pacifiers, also called binkies or soothers, because of fears that they may interfere with breast-feeding, increase ear infections, cause dental problems or smack of an old-fashioned idea that a quiet baby is a good baby. But now the AAP is recommending pacifiers for nap and bedtime for the first year of a baby's life.
It perplexes Todd Berkowitz, who isn't anti-pacifier. His kids don't seem to like them. ``The idea that you would try to keep them from sleeping deeply seems counterintuitive,'' Berkowitz said.
Meg Zweiback, an Oakland pediatric nurse ..., said the pacifier recommendation may cause more sleep problems for babies and ultimately parents.
``If you start recommending to people to soothe baby with a pacifier, some of those babies are going to wake up during the night to need the pacifier to fall back asleep.''
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Little Gb is now 4 months old. He was sleeping thru the night at 7 weeks. Last night he slept 12 hours. He has his own room, and he never sleeps with us. He takes three short naps a day, each of which are followed immediately by feeding him. We never feed him so that he goes to sleep.
And he has found his thumb just fine.
So why would the MSM trumpet a report that screws up sleep? Maybe so that sleep deprived parents, and kids, will turn on the T.V. and watch .... the MSM.
Not to mention the fact that every single scientific study regarding sleep has shown that lack of sleep can make people measurably stupider. To prevent kids from sleeping deeply when they are REALLY young? Counterintuitive is right.
(All this said, SIDS itself is no laughing matter. Little Gb has been sleeping on his back from the outset. That part made sense.)
(article published today, btw ... gotta go to work now. Pacifiers are expensive, and plasma T.V.s especially so...)
In our house it's "the plug". Mia is now 5 months, and has pretty much slept through the night since about 3 months. She's still in a cradle right next to our bed, but man is she getting big. Time to put the crib back together.
She's not big on the thumb. It's either the first two fingers, the whole fist, or anything within reach.
I raised 4 non=pacifier kids. I offered, but none ever accepted. When I put son #2 down on his back, almost 24 years ago, in the hospital, the nurse had a fit and told me that if he spit up, he's choke to death.
Fifteen years later, when I put son #4 down on his tummy, the nurse in the hospital had a fit - told me he's die of SIDS.
No, it wasn't the same nurse.
Basically, I don't believe any of them!!
My only words of advice on this one.... You can never take a thumb away... pacifiers are much easier to ween a child off of, and don't cause the types of dental issues long term thumb sucking can.
Exactly. My political science professor in college used to harp that "association is not causation." In other words, just because they've found a higher incidence of SIDS in stomach sleepers vs. back sleepers, it doesn't mean that the one causes the other.
Once they figure out what SIDS *is*, then I'll listen to their recommendations.
My son Jayson is 4 1/2 months. He started sleeping through the night, from 8:30 - 5 am or so, at 2 months.
We use the poo-poo (my wife's term) to calm him down or to put him to sleep. He is on a good schedule now of Eat, play, nap. He naps three times a day for about 45 min each time waking without us waking him.
He found his thumb but cannot fall asleep while sucking on it.
I don't particularly care what the MSM has to say about giving / not giving pacifiers. If you read three different reports you will get three different opinions.
It seems to work with my son and that is good enough for me.
I disagree with the idea that taking the baby to bed with you could increase SIDS. Unless momma or daddy is drunk.
The AAP is not as reliable as it used to be. Not since it offended so many of its own ethics committee members that they had to go form their own "American College of Pediatricians."
http://acpeds.org/
I have 3 kids ages 4, 2 and 11 months. I breastfed them all and they all used pacifiers. We never had any problems with the pacifier. They slept in a cradle beside my bed and after nursing, I would fall asleep with my hand reaching over helping to hold the pacifier in with my second child. None of my other two really cared about it too much. My first son weaned himself from the nuk when he was 9 months, my son that turned 2 in August will have his all taken by Santa this year and my baby girl doesn't really care about hers, just so she has her blanket.
I always take this stuff with a grain of salt. SIDS is something horrible and they still don't know why it happens. I used the sleep sacks in the winter or chilly months, which are wonderful. Just use their suggestions for dangers like the pillows or comforters. BTW, my second son was sleeping for 8 hour periods after he was born and the nurses kept telling me to wake him up to feed him. I humored them in the hospital, but when I got home, NEVER!! He weighed 28 pounds at his one year check up ( he was off the charts in height.) Of course, once he became a walker, he weighed 28 pounds 12 ounces at his 2 year check up! LOL! Do what you think is best.
GB,
Congratulations as you enter the adventure of parenthood. Each of my 4 kids was given different SIDS instructions. Sleep on back stomach, sideways and angled (not necessarily in that order)
The pacifier one is new though. None of ours really did the pacifier route though, I bet we only bought 4 or 5 of them in total. They all found their thumbs or favorite fingers. In fact, we just broke our youngest (6) of sucking his finger at night in the last month. (the promise of $20.00 at Walmart finally got through to him, Of course, I'm going to let him buy an airsoft pistol so we can have family backyard wars games, with proper eye protection of course.)
It turns out that the "back to bed" (putting the baby on his back) works: in the UK, the number of SIDS deaths were cut in half after parents were alerted to do this.
It took me forever to figure this one out and get used to the idea. But, if you think about it, breastfed babies will be on their backs when feeding. So, it's "natural."
It still drives me nuts to see the kids with the bald, flat spot on the back of their heads from being put on their backs. But, I was a belly-pack, carry the baby all the time - maybe too much of the time - La Leche League momma.
And I will never get used to all the yellow-tinged skin from all the vitamin A.
I think if you listen to the AAP, you have to put you child to sleep in a specially constructed crib that has a gimbal arrangment that allow the child to be flipped from his back to his stomach, controlled via a dedicated cell-phone link attached to the AAP Control Center.
We weren't quite sure how to get her to give them up, so we started by telling her that if she wanted to use one, it could only be in her crib - no more around the house. Thus the term "go-go break", where we'd toss her in her crib with a pacifier for 5 minutes or so a few times a day. We kept the pacifiers up in a basket on a high shelf in the girls' closet.
Finally, we actually got a night out (a very rare occasion) and the neighbor girl down the street babysat and put the girls to bed. When we came home, little "go-go girl" was sleeping peacefully without the pacifiers. We were stunned that she didn't put up a fuss, but the sitter assured us she had no trouble. She went cold turkey from that moment.
On another subject: Daughter #1, who is 3 yrs older than the twins slept on her stomach - we were advised to sleep her that way in the event she'd spit up in the night. 3 yrs. later, the advice had changed (although we had the additional hassle/blessing of apnea monitors-anyone who's used them will know what I mean!). To be honest, I wonder if there's really anything that can be done to "prevent" a SIDS death. That's gotta be one of the hardest things a person could ever go through, and to lay blame "if only I had done ____ or not done ______" seems additionally cruel since we have yet to figure out exactly why it happens.
The biggest change since the death of my daughter from SIDS was the 'back to sleep' recommenddation which has cut the rate from 2/100000 to 1/1000000. May not sound like a lot unless it is your kid. We were lucky in that we got counciling through the San Diego chapter of the Guild for Infant Survival and they told us that the SIDS death is not-preventable, not-predictable, and some of the best medical minds are investigation.
Unfortuatly there are a lot of quacks out there who will tell you 'X causes Y'. I'll have to dig for the actualy recommendations because the media can not tell two related facts together without screwing them up nine times out of ten.
Doesn't that, in and of itself, prove that the vast majority of SIDS cases are suffocation?
Is cigarette smoking still considered a factor? I did a searche and some websites say yes and some say no.
It might be hard to prove. The question is not "did the parents smoke?" The question is "did the parents smoke on a regular basis right next to the baby, and how good was the ventilation?"
I've always believed the vast majority of SIDS deaths are basicly after birth abortions.
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