In November 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Task Force on sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) published an updated policy statement1 with guidelines to reduce the risk of SIDS and other sleep-related deaths. Although there were several changes in the recommendations, the one that got the most attention was the recommendation that room-sharing without bed-sharing should be practiced “ideally for a year, but at least for 6 months.” The previous (2011) policy statement had stated that all of the recommendations should be followed until the infant is 1 year of age.2 Many pediatricians and other health care providers have voiced concerns that room-sharing for 6 months or 1 year will result in negative consequences on the quality of parental and child sleep. Up to now, there have been few studies looking at sleep outcomes in room-sharing and solitary sleeping (ie, sleeping in a separate room from the...
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July 2017
Commentary|
July 01 2017
Are There Long-term Consequences of Room-Sharing During Infancy?
Rachel Y. Moon, MD;
aDepartments of Pediatrics and
Address correspondence to Rachel Y. Moon, MD, Division of General Pediatrics, University of Virginia, PO Box 800386, Charlottesville, VA 22908. E-mail: rym4z@virginia.edu
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Fern R. Hauck, MD
Fern R. Hauck, MD
bFamily Medicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia
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Address correspondence to Rachel Y. Moon, MD, Division of General Pediatrics, University of Virginia, PO Box 800386, Charlottesville, VA 22908. E-mail: rym4z@virginia.edu
POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors have indicated they have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.
FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE: The authors have indicated they have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.
Pediatrics (2017) 140 (1): e20171323.
Article history
Accepted:
April 19 2017
Citation
Rachel Y. Moon, Fern R. Hauck; Are There Long-term Consequences of Room-Sharing During Infancy?. Pediatrics July 2017; 140 (1): e20171323. 10.1542/peds.2017-1323
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In our small pediatric practice we have chosen not to endorse this recommendation. This is really a change for us because we have fully supported all AAP recommendations in the past. We are seeing a dramatic uptick in maternal anxiety and PPD as a consequence of or possibly coincidentally with longer room sharing. We find the parents are waking at every grunt, and we all know babies are loud restless sleepers. This is causing the moms to get very little sleep and heightening mood disorder symptoms. As you said, all recommendations have consequences, and this is one that deserves more study.
The study may have had social class as an intervening variable. In Japan all the babies sleep with parents or at least in the same room. This makes the children more devoted to their parents and law abiding. The baby boom generation were the Spock babies and they cared about civil rights. If you want to raise Republicans, isolation like this might work as these children will not care about the poor. I think the isolated babies sleep longer because they cry themselves to sleep and are also depressed. This method is supposed to teach self-reliance when the mother doesn't come, and that is the rage now. Infants can sleep beside their mothers' beds. That's where they want to be.