The baby bed should contain nothing but the baby and the mattress. Use no covering, pillows, bumper pads or toys. Heavy covering and soft mattresses increase the risk for

SIDS. Do not put too many clothes on the infant for sleeping. Maintain a comfortable temperature in the room. Overheating an infant increases the risk for SIDS.

Breast Feed If Possible

If you can, breast-feed your baby. Research has shown that babies receiving breast milk have less risk of respiratory and gastrointestinal infections. Overall, babies drinking breast milk have less risk of SIDS than babies not getting breast milk.

You should keep your baby away from crowds, where respiratory infections such as colds and the flu travel from person to person. If something is going into your baby's mouth, make sure it is clean. If people are holding the baby get them to wash their hands first. SIDS can occur in association with a relatively mild respiratory issue such as a cold, or a gastrointestinal infection such as vomiting or diarrhea.

Parents should consider using a SIDS monitor, an apnea/bradiacardia monitoring system, for a high-risk infant. Infants in the following groups have a risk five to 10 times greater than the general population of SDS.

Those who weighed less than 3.5 pounds at birth
Infants with a brother or sister who died of SIDS
Those whose mother was using cocaine, methadone or heroin during her pregnancy
The second, third or more baby born to a teenage mother
Infants who have experienced trauma, such as an automobile accident, fire, or other event that may have threatened their lives

More male babies than females die from SIDS and kids in the two to four month range have the highest incidence of death in the overall infant population.

Some mothers say their babies don't like sleeping on their backs, but it's difficult to know for sure, because they can't talk. However they do tend to cry more when placed on their backs and placing them on their tummies appears to c alm them down and help them sleep. But parents should not give in. Infants are more likely to have apnea (pauses in breathing) when on their stomachs.

They are more likely to re-breathe air they have just exhaled, which can raise their level of carbon dioxide and they retain more heat when on their tummies, which can be a danger for some infants. Most convincing is the statistic that stomach-sleep has up to 12.9 times the risk of death as back sleep.

The exact causes of SIDS remain a mystery and debate swirls about everything from SIDS and vaccines to SIDS and an undiscovered brain defect. At this stage the best thing a parent can do to reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is to place sleeping children on their backs. This is the best piece of current advice and should be the initial steps in your SIDS prevention initiative.

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