The news that’s taking the parenting world by storm: the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) now recommends that parents have their baby sleep in their room for the first year of their life “to minimize the risk of sleep-related deaths,” according to an NBC News report.
This new policy change was announced yesterday as part of the AAP’s latest efforts to update its guidelines around preventing infant sleep-related deaths. And this is a pretty significant change given that — up until this point — many U.S. pediatricians have said that new parents could let their babies sleep in separate rooms starting as early as two months.
It’s worth noting that the AAP is NOT calling for parents to let their child sleep in the same bed — rather, that the baby sleep in a crib or bassinet by the parents’ bed. According to Dr. Lori Feldman-Winter, a co-author of the AAP guidelines and pediatrics researcher at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University:
Sleeping in the same room, but not in the same bed, may reduce babies’ risk of SIDS by up to 50 percent.”
Obviously, every parent wants to do everything right by their child — especially when it comes to their safety. But I can also imagine that a lot of parents are probably hearing this news and going: Are you SERIOUS?? One whole year of my baby shrieking in the middle of the night, right by my head?
