SIDS and cosleeping rates by country

[Honey693]

Is there anywhere to find the SIDS rate by country and the cosleeping rate (or at least if it's the norm)? I keep hearing that Japan has basically a 0% SIDS rate and I know cosleeping is the norm there so I'm wondering what it looks like in other countries.

[babygirlie]

I heard australia's SIDS rate dropped to almost nothing after using plastic wrappings for mattresses.

[Smokering]

Hmm. The stats might be hard to get - cosleeping is probably underreported in countries where it's officially discouraged. Plus, what counts as cosleeping - all night every night, after the first night feed, only on weeks when Daddy has night shift? Tricky to tabulate.

SIDS is also tricky, as it can be a kind of catch-all diagnosis. Sometimes, if a coroner thinks the cause of death was suffocation (ie, someone who thinks cosleeping is dangerous and saw the baby died in a family bed), he might not investigate further to find that it was actually SIDS... and so on. So I'm not sure how accurate those statistics are either...?

I believe putting a baby in its own room (as opposed to "cosleeping" proper - the term includes a baby in a separate bed/bassinet/hammock, as long as he's within arms' reach of a parent) is supposed to increase the risk of SIDS fourfold. Most people opposed to cosleeping aren't worried about SIDS but suffocation (although people often use the terms interchangeably, which is incorrect). There is a small possibility that a baby might overheat in a family bed, if he's covered with lots of duvets and so on - and a higher core body temp is a risk factor for SIDS. But another study showed cosleeping babies are better able to regulate their internal temperatures; plus, of course, there are simple ways of not letting your baby overheat (like putting him on top of the covers in a sleep sack, not underneath them).

Japan's low infant death rate may be attributable to a few things:

-futons, not deep squishy mattresses, and a general lack of duvets and pillows and things that can suffocate babies (although I'm not sure how true this holds today - have sleeping habits become more Westernised?)
-a high breastfeeding rate. BFing throughout the night gives the baby "something to live for", as it were - the smell of the breastmilk wakes the baby up several times throughout the night, so he doesn't fall into the more dangerous deep phases of sleep. Plus, the close proximity to the mother helps him to regulate his breathing, and her exhaled CO2 near his face stimulates him to breathe more as well. I'm not sure how beneficial cosleeping is, comparatively, without breastfeeding in terms of SIDS prevention. I assume there's still some benefit, but maybe a little less?

Clear as mud? I can try to dig up some more cosleeping factoids from my brain if you need them - I wrote an article for a parenting mag on the subject a year or two back. Very interesting topic.