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CHICAGO (AP) - Babies should be offered pacifiers at bedtime, and they should sleep in their parents' room — but not in their beds — in order to lessen the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, the nation's largest group of pediatricians says.
Both measures may help keep babies from slumbering too deeply — a problem for infants prone to SIDS, said Dr. Rachel Moon, who helped draft the new recommendations on SIDS prevention. They were prepared for release Monday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The death rate from SIDS has fallen sharply in recent years, now that parents are warned not to let their babies sleep on their stomachs or amid fluffy bedding or stuffed toys. But it remains the leading case of death in U.S. infants between ages 1 month and 1 year, killing more than 2,000 U.S. babies each year, and new tactics are needed to fight it, the academy said.
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