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Putting an infant alone in a room of their own seems to be an exclusively western practice and is completely foreign to me. 3500 American babies due suddenly a

Putting an infant alone in a room of their own seems to be an exclusively western practice and is completely foreign to me. 3500 American babies due suddenly and unexpectedly from SIDS every year. I wonder if there is any research into where these babies were sleeping when they died. Am I an idiot for wondering if they died from the sheer terror of waking up alone in a dark room?

thargor90 4y ago
This is not how SIDS works. Children just stop breathing. Some newer research suggests this is a genetic issue. Of course there is misdiagnosis for children that suffocate because of toys/blankets.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  Everyone stops breathing sometimes, but SIDS babies lack certain hormone that causes reaction (start wiggling to remove pillow or start screaming). IIRC Australian scientists identified the marker recently.
  - d1sxeyes 4y ago
    Sort of. Australian scientists discovered there is a correlation between low levels of the enzyme BChE and increased SIDS risk. It's worth noting that there's a fair bit of evidence that actually points to AChE rather than BChE, but AChE is much more volatile and so harder to measure. It's a particularly interesting finding because we already know that low levels of BChE correspond to an additional challenges waking up from anaesthetic, and the working hypothesis is that this may be linked to the arousal system. One other potential link is to SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy), which so far we also don't understand the cause of, but it may be similar to SIDS (or in fact, it may even be the exact same condition) - it often presents very similarly (face down in bed, no obvious signs of suffocation, etc.). In fact, in Australia and New Zealand, SIDS is being renamed to SUDI (Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy), which sort of speaks for itself in terms of similarities.
cycomanic 4y ago
Actually for SIDS there are studies that show co-sleeping is correlated, in particular with alcohol and smoking from the parents.
- ciphol 4y ago
  Studies show that to prevent SIDS you should sleep in the same room as the baby, but not in the same bed.
  - reitanqild 4y ago
    Most important seems to be: - don't smoke - always have infants sleep on their back
russdill 4y ago
The recommendation in the US is to have infants sleep in the same room in a bassinet. Then moving to a crib, often in a separate room, around 4-6 months. Co-sleeping is also somewhat popular, but it greatly increases the chance of SIDS with risks skyrocketing for smoking mothers and those who are bed-sharing but don't usually do bed-sharing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2065975/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2065975/
- uxp100 4y ago
  The current recommendation in the US is strongly encourages same room for a year.
upwardbound 4y ago
To help prevent SIDS, I highly highly recommend a product called the Owlet Smart Sock. It was discontinued due to not being FDA approved but it is still available on eBay and it is a potential lifesaver. What it does is that it's a pulse oximeter that sounds an alarm if your baby stops breathing or their blood oxygen falls below a threshold. This device potentially saved the life of one of our kids and I cannot recommend it enough. Our baby had fallen into a too deep sleep and though he looked peaceful his blood oxygen was very low and we had to aggressively wake him up to get him to start breathing again. The product I am talking about is NOT the Owlet Dream Sock. That version is useless for this purpose. You need the now-discontinued Owlet Smart Sock, of which the most recent version was version 3. I believe the app is no longer available in the app store, and you need the app to use it, but I think if you have an Android device you can probably find an APK on one of the APK mirror sites. Personally, I have the iOS app which I still have due to having installed it on my phone before it was discontinued. I hope someone will make an open-source product like this. It's conceptually quite simple: connect a pulse oximeter to a loud audible alarm. I would also love to be able to get an adult version as well for my grandparents that would call 911 automatically if they stop breathing or their heart stops. Calling 911 automatically would not be allowed in a product I think, but it could be done in an open-source / open-hardware product where the builder of the kit takes on the liability of breaking the 911-related laws (which in my view is a tiny price to pay for saving a loved one's life). If any hardware hackers are looking for project ideas, an open version of the Owlet Smart Sock would be an incredible thing to build for the world. P.S. my pet theory for what causes SIDS is that the part of the brain stem that controls breathing needs time to develop, and when the brain is super young that part of the brain is not yet fully developed, and is susceptible to failing to do its job. I think of an analogy to how people can die of failing to breathe during a heroin overdose, wherein that same part of the brain is put into a state where it doesn't maintain a high enough breathing rate. I suspect the failure mechanism in the overdose situation and the SIDS situation might be analogous.
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  Thanks for the product rec. Does this work via bluetooth or did they somehow keep the servers on?
wil421 4y ago
The doctors recommend keeping an infant in the same room for 6 months to 1 year. Most say 1 year.
- prox 4y ago
  This must have been the default for human history probably as well, I am thinking.
  - wil421 4y ago
    They also said the switch to putting babies back side down (as opposed to stomach side) had something like a 50% decrease in SIDS in the US.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    I'd wager that for most of human history at least three generations lived in the same room.
    - christophilus 4y ago
      I’m not sure. Biblical accounts seem to indicate everyone had their own tent. Granted, these were rich patriarchs, so maybe not the norm back then. Is anyone here familiar with the subject across ancient cultures more broadly? Personally, I sleep better when I’m alone. Haven’t convinced my wife that we should have a separate king and queen suite, though.
      - djpr 4y ago
        Not ancient, but I come from indigenous folks that live Southeast Asia. Because we're from up high in the mountains, the traditional way of living is supposed to go back quite far in time. There are still a few that live traditionally in what basically is a large, two-floor long house for a multi-generational household. The families live on the second floor in one large room, but often with a small loft area for a quasi-third floodr The bottom floor is open with no walls (just support beams) to keep the animals. So it's constantly noisy.
dvratil 4y ago
We bought a breath monitor which is a desk/plate (about 20x50cm) with a small device attached via a long cable. You put the desk under the mattress and hang the device somewhere on the crib. When it's on and the kid would stop breathing, the device starts beeping really loud. It already triggered a few times for us, luckily in all cases it was because we carried the baby from the crib a forgot the turn off the breath detector :-D
- upwardbound 4y ago
  Would you be willing to share the name & brand of that product? Thank you.
  - d1sxeyes 4y ago
    I have the Babysense 2 Pro, which may not be exactly the same brand as OP is describing, but does fit their description. Obviously, it's one of those things where most people will never actually know if it works or not (thankfully), but based on the fact that it goes off without fail every time I forget to turn the damn thing off after picking the baby up fills me with confidence that it does do what it's supposed to.
logicalmonster 4y ago
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > An overwhelmed parent who is at the end of their rope just snaps and smothers the baby to make the crying stop Except that there is exactly zero evidence to support this. Those sort of injuries would be as readily apparent as if you'd run the child over with a lorry, and they are absent.
  - MisterTea 4y ago
    A pillow placed over an infants face produces the same injuries as running it over with a lorry? Either that is one soft lorry or you mistook the tyre for a pillow.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Surely all the depressed mothers in the moment figured out how to cover their traces as well, all coordinated through the hivemind.
      - logicalmonster 4y ago
        1) Maybe this is the case, but what reason is there to assume that the mother is the culprit? 2) Does a detailed CSI-level investigation take place when an infant dies of an apparent SIDS death? I'm sure the parents are delicately asked about what happened for somebody to fill out the paperwork, but if there's no obvious bruising or broken bones or anything, how intense is an actual investigation?
        kaba0 4y ago
        1) I used it purely for satirical purposes. 2) Occam’s razor. I will give you that sleeping with newborns in bed and accidentally smothering them happens all too often, but anything more malicious can in my opinion be safely discarded, because parent’s killing their child require way more presupposition and proof would be on your side.

thargor90 4y ago

This is not how SIDS works. Children just stop breathing. Some newer research suggests this is a genetic issue. Of course there is misdiagnosis for children that suffocate because of toys/blankets.

dzhiurgis 4y ago
Everyone stops breathing sometimes, but SIDS babies lack certain hormone that causes reaction (start wiggling to remove pillow or start screaming). IIRC Australian scientists identified the marker recently.
- d1sxeyes 4y ago
  Sort of. Australian scientists discovered there is a correlation between low levels of the enzyme BChE and increased SIDS risk. It's worth noting that there's a fair bit of evidence that actually points to AChE rather than BChE, but AChE is much more volatile and so harder to measure. It's a particularly interesting finding because we already know that low levels of BChE correspond to an additional challenges waking up from anaesthetic, and the working hypothesis is that this may be linked to the arousal system. One other potential link is to SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy), which so far we also don't understand the cause of, but it may be similar to SIDS (or in fact, it may even be the exact same condition) - it often presents very similarly (face down in bed, no obvious signs of suffocation, etc.). In fact, in Australia and New Zealand, SIDS is being renamed to SUDI (Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy), which sort of speaks for itself in terms of similarities.

cycomanic 4y ago

Actually for SIDS there are studies that show co-sleeping is correlated, in particular with alcohol and smoking from the parents.

ciphol 4y ago
Studies show that to prevent SIDS you should sleep in the same room as the baby, but not in the same bed.
- reitanqild 4y ago
  Most important seems to be: - don't smoke - always have infants sleep on their back

russdill 4y ago

The recommendation in the US is to have infants sleep in the same room in a bassinet. Then moving to a crib, often in a separate room, around 4-6 months. Co-sleeping is also somewhat popular, but it greatly increases the chance of SIDS with risks skyrocketing for smoking mothers and those who are bed-sharing but don't usually do bed-sharing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2065975/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2065975/

uxp100 4y ago
The current recommendation in the US is strongly encourages same room for a year.

upwardbound 4y ago

To help prevent SIDS, I highly highly recommend a product called the Owlet Smart Sock. It was discontinued due to not being FDA approved but it is still available on eBay and it is a potential lifesaver. What it does is that it's a pulse oximeter that sounds an alarm if your baby stops breathing or their blood oxygen falls below a threshold. This device potentially saved the life of one of our kids and I cannot recommend it enough. Our baby had fallen into a too deep sleep and though he looked peaceful his blood oxygen was very low and we had to aggressively wake him up to get him to start breathing again. The product I am talking about is NOT the Owlet Dream Sock. That version is useless for this purpose. You need the now-discontinued Owlet Smart Sock, of which the most recent version was version 3. I believe the app is no longer available in the app store, and you need the app to use it, but I think if you have an Android device you can probably find an APK on one of the APK mirror sites. Personally, I have the iOS app which I still have due to having installed it on my phone before it was discontinued. I hope someone will make an open-source product like this. It's conceptually quite simple: connect a pulse oximeter to a loud audible alarm. I would also love to be able to get an adult version as well for my grandparents that would call 911 automatically if they stop breathing or their heart stops. Calling 911 automatically would not be allowed in a product I think, but it could be done in an open-source / open-hardware product where the builder of the kit takes on the liability of breaking the 911-related laws (which in my view is a tiny price to pay for saving a loved one's life). If any hardware hackers are looking for project ideas, an open version of the Owlet Smart Sock would be an incredible thing to build for the world. P.S. my pet theory for what causes SIDS is that the part of the brain stem that controls breathing needs time to develop, and when the brain is super young that part of the brain is not yet fully developed, and is susceptible to failing to do its job. I think of an analogy to how people can die of failing to breathe during a heroin overdose, wherein that same part of the brain is put into a state where it doesn't maintain a high enough breathing rate. I suspect the failure mechanism in the overdose situation and the SIDS situation might be analogous.

OrangeMonkey 4y ago
Thanks for the product rec. Does this work via bluetooth or did they somehow keep the servers on?

wil421 4y ago

The doctors recommend keeping an infant in the same room for 6 months to 1 year. Most say 1 year.

prox 4y ago
This must have been the default for human history probably as well, I am thinking.
- wil421 4y ago
  They also said the switch to putting babies back side down (as opposed to stomach side) had something like a 50% decrease in SIDS in the US.
- adrianN 4y ago
  I'd wager that for most of human history at least three generations lived in the same room.
  - christophilus 4y ago
    I’m not sure. Biblical accounts seem to indicate everyone had their own tent. Granted, these were rich patriarchs, so maybe not the norm back then. Is anyone here familiar with the subject across ancient cultures more broadly? Personally, I sleep better when I’m alone. Haven’t convinced my wife that we should have a separate king and queen suite, though.
    - djpr 4y ago
      Not ancient, but I come from indigenous folks that live Southeast Asia. Because we're from up high in the mountains, the traditional way of living is supposed to go back quite far in time. There are still a few that live traditionally in what basically is a large, two-floor long house for a multi-generational household. The families live on the second floor in one large room, but often with a small loft area for a quasi-third floodr The bottom floor is open with no walls (just support beams) to keep the animals. So it's constantly noisy.

dvratil 4y ago

We bought a breath monitor which is a desk/plate (about 20x50cm) with a small device attached via a long cable. You put the desk under the mattress and hang the device somewhere on the crib. When it's on and the kid would stop breathing, the device starts beeping really loud. It already triggered a few times for us, luckily in all cases it was because we carried the baby from the crib a forgot the turn off the breath detector :-D

upwardbound 4y ago
Would you be willing to share the name & brand of that product? Thank you.
- d1sxeyes 4y ago
  I have the Babysense 2 Pro, which may not be exactly the same brand as OP is describing, but does fit their description. Obviously, it's one of those things where most people will never actually know if it works or not (thankfully), but based on the fact that it goes off without fail every time I forget to turn the damn thing off after picking the baby up fills me with confidence that it does do what it's supposed to.

logicalmonster 4y ago

Gordonjcp 4y ago
> An overwhelmed parent who is at the end of their rope just snaps and smothers the baby to make the crying stop Except that there is exactly zero evidence to support this. Those sort of injuries would be as readily apparent as if you'd run the child over with a lorry, and they are absent.
- MisterTea 4y ago
  A pillow placed over an infants face produces the same injuries as running it over with a lorry? Either that is one soft lorry or you mistook the tyre for a pillow.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Surely all the depressed mothers in the moment figured out how to cover their traces as well, all coordinated through the hivemind.
    - logicalmonster 4y ago
      1) Maybe this is the case, but what reason is there to assume that the mother is the culprit? 2) Does a detailed CSI-level investigation take place when an infant dies of an apparent SIDS death? I'm sure the parents are delicately asked about what happened for somebody to fill out the paperwork, but if there's no obvious bruising or broken bones or anything, how intense is an actual investigation?
      - kaba0 4y ago
        1) I used it purely for satirical purposes. 2) Occam’s razor. I will give you that sleeping with newborns in bed and accidentally smothering them happens all too often, but anything more malicious can in my opinion be safely discarded, because parent’s killing their child require way more presupposition and proof would be on your side.