One hospital saw 30 infant deaths from unsafe sleeping in 15 months

Waking up every few hours in the middle of the night to feed their newborn, parents may find it easier to let the baby sleep in their bed with them. It’s a seemingly harmless decision that can lead to a parent’s worst nightmare.

This is the first time the hospital has released data on infant deaths linked to unsafe sleep, so it’s difficult to compare with years past. But trauma injury prevention coordinator Sharon Evans said the death toll in the past 15 months is at the highest peak since she began her role at Cook Children’s in 2008.

A majority of the deaths involved co-sleeping with at least one parent or caregiver.

“When you’re sleeping, you don’t have control of your body movements. You don’t have the ability to say, ‘OK, I’m not going to roll this way. I’m going to keep this space.’ We often see the caregiver has rolled on top of the infant and the infant suffocates and they don’t realize until the caregiver wakes up the next morning,” said Samantha St. John, who leads the safe sleep initiatives at the Center for Children’s Health led by Cook Children’s.

Trauma records showed other unsafe sleep circumstances as well, including babies placed on a pillow with a propped bottle, on the couch next to a sleeping adult and wearing a loose T-shirt that covered the baby’s face.

These deaths and injuries are entirely preventable, St. John said. About 3,500 babies die from sleep-related complications each year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Between 30 and 33 die each year in Dallas County, Marisa Abbe, program manager of injury prevention at Children’s Health in Dallas.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants from birth through 12 months sleep in their own bassinet or crib with only a fitted sheet — no blankets, pillows or stuffed animals should be in the crib, Abbe said.

“Adults want to comfort their babies with blankets and pillows when they sleep, but babies just need a firm surface free of objects they could suffocate on,” Abbe said.

Babies should also always sleep flat on their backs.

“When we have infants on their tummy, if they spit up in their sleep, when they go to swallow that spit up back, it’s going to go to the lowest point, which is going to be right into their lungs,” St. John said.

Black infants represented a majority — 16 of the 30 deaths recorded by Cook Children’s. The group with the highest unsafe sleep deaths were Black boys from 2 to 6 months old.

That tragic trend falls in line with national data, St. John said, and could be attributable to less access to health care and health education. Black infants die at more than twice the rate of white and Hispanic infants, according to 2019 CDC data.

Cook Children’s reestablished a safe sleep task force in response to the recent data. The task force aims to educate staff members on how important it is to talk to families about what safe sleep environments look like. If health care professionals learn that a family doesn’t have a safe sleeping place for their infant, they can contact St. John’s team to get the family safe sleeping resources.