Something that worried me before my baby was born was how they should sleep. I was really worried about cot death (SIDS) and wanted to do everything I could to make it as unlikely as possible.

These are some of the things that I discovered were essential:

• Don’t smoke around the baby. Don’t let anyone else smoke around them either, don’t let them even cuddle the baby for 20 minutes after they have had a cigarette.
• Don’t let the room temperature get too hot. If you can comfortably wander around in a t-shirt – the room is warm enough.
• Don’t cover the baby in too many clothes for sleeping, or too many blankets. Remember if you fold a blanket in half then it is like using 2 blankets. If you fold it into quarters, you now are using 4 blankets.
• Make sure you are using a new, hard mattress, and you don’t need a duvet or pillow for a baby.
• Soft furnishings with lots of soft toys, cot bumpers etc, look lovely, but they are not necessary, and could infact be a suffocation risk. Ties on bumpers can be pulled by a baby.
• Make sure the cot or bed is the right size for your baby, that the rungs are not too wide that they can get limbs or their head stuck, and that they are tall enough so your baby cannot climb out.
• Fold the blanket snuggly around the baby, and tuck it in at the bottom, and the sides, under the mattress. This way it will stay in place much longer and not ride up around the baby’s head.
• Always place the baby ‘feet-to-foot’ in their crib or cot. This means, place them with their feet right at the foot of the cot. I thought this looked strange at first, and it really wasn’t what I expected. However, it makes total sense. This way the baby will not wriggle down beneath the blanket. It is so much safer.

Here are two pictures, the 1st shows how not to place your baby for sleeping. The 2nd shows the feet-to-foot position. The left hand side is the top of the cot and the right hand side is the foot.

You can see how in the 1st picture, the baby has lots of room to move down underneath the cover, but in the 2nd, if the baby wriggles, they will move up, and away from the cover. This is so much safer.

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