How parents put their babies to bed at
night has a significant impact on the infants' health, new research
suggests.
Two new studies indicate that proper crib
protocol can result in a more restful night's sleep for babies and their
parents, and can reduce the likelihood of asthma, wheezing and even sudden
infant death syndrome.
The findings suggest that parents who
give their babies bottles in bed at night and who stop swaddling their
babies soon after they leave the hospital are setting their children up for
health risks.
The age-old practice of swaddling, in
which babies are bundled snugly, results in better sleep for babies and
keeps them on their backs longer, thereby reducing the chance of sudden
infant death syndrome (SIDS), according to researchers in St. Louis, Miss.
The other study, from researchers at
Harvard University, found that children who are given a bottle in their crib
or bed before they go to sleep are considerably more likely to have
recurrent wheezing episodes or develop asthma.
Both studies on these aspects of baby's
bedtime routine appear in the latest issue of the journal Pediatrics.
"This could be something that will
help parents and babies stay safe and stay sane," said Dr. Claudia
Gerard, lead author of the swaddling study and a clinical instructor in
newborn medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
She said the team began looking into the
effectiveness of swaddling to get more parents to keep their babies on their
backs for sleeping. Previous research has found that sleeping on the back
significantly reduces the risk of SIDS.
Even though most hospital nurseries use
this snug bundling method, the majority of parents abandon swaddling within
the first few weeks, and before long, some parents allow their babies to
sleep on their stomachs, said Gerard.
Since many parents said they resorted to
stomach-sleeping simply because their babies seemed more settled, the
researchers tried to come up with a way to make sleeping on the back more
comfortable for baby.
Researchers developed a special swaddle
made of cotton spandex material that gives enough to allow the baby to
breathe easily and yet is tight enough that the infant cannot break free of
the swaddle.
The study monitored the sleep states of
26 healthy infants, ranging in age from about three weeks to five months, as
they were alternately swaddled and unswaddled during the course of a daytime
nap.
The same infants showed considerably
fewer startles during both rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and quiet sleep
stages when they were swaddled, and the duration of REM sleep almost doubled
with swaddling.
"We now have scientific evidence to
support what ancient history and other cultures have told us: Swaddling
helps babies sleep," said Dr. Gerard. "If the baby sleeps for
three hours, nobody's going to feel the need to put him on his tummy ... He
will sleep more safely."
The other study scrutinized the impact of
another aspect of the baby bedtime routine, giving the baby a bottle in the
crib or bed before sleep time.
In a study of 448 children with a family
history of allergies, those given a bottle in bed were significantly more
likely to experience recurrent wheezing or asthma.
In fact, the risk of wheezing between the
ages of one and five increased with each additional report of bottle feeding
in the crib in the first year of life: A child whose parents reported three
occasions of bedtime bottle feeding in the first year had a 1.5 times higher
risk of wheezing than a child whose parents did not report bottle feeding in
bed. 12.7% of the babies given bottles in bed developed asthma by the age of
five, compared with 7% of those who weren't given bottles in bed.
Dr. Juan Celedon, lead author of the
study and an instructor in medicine at Harvard, said this is the first study
to demonstrate a connection between giving babies bottles in bed and
developing asthma or wheezing.
He said further research should focus on
whether the findings are replicated in the general population, and not just
those already at risk of developing these problems.
As many as 20% of children in Canada are
reported to have asthma, which has become the most common childhood illness
after the cold. -
Anne Marie Owens National
Post
5
Dec 2002
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