October 10, 2005

And In Other Sucking News: Pacifiers May Prevent SIDS

A woman stopped me on the street today to tell me that pacifiers may prevent SIDS. Literally. Of course, she only told me after testing my parental knowledge of SIDS prevention on-camera. She was from ABC News, and the Kid an I were walking past ABC HQ, on our way home from the Natural History Museum. So if I said what they wanted to hear, I'll be on ABC World News Tonight Without Peter Jennings [wake up the grandparents]. Unfortunately, the cold weather meant my Daddy Type t-shirt was buried under a sweater and a Kozmo.com jacket.

But anyway, it's true: a new study shows a correlation between pacifier use and SIDS reduction, and the American Academy of Pediatricians has issued new anti-SIDS guidelines that encourage pacifiers and discourage bed sharing. When considered alongside that incident with The View chicks, an ABC-led media assault on breastfeeders is only weeks away.

Pacifiers May Prevent SIDS

3 Comments

You need to get Daddy Type embroidered jackets, you could have gotten some good free publicity! As a statistician, news articles make me laugh... another usage of statistics to make the numbers appear to be what they want. I'd love to see the actual study on it.

It's great that 2500 less babies are being lost to SIDS, but is the overall chance (among all babies) seriously decreasing? I agree that a life saved is worth saving, but is my 3 mo at a significantly higher risk because he won't take a pacifier but only his fingers? Should I go out and get a contraption that sticks a pacifier in his mouth that hooks around the head like swim goggles?

And the end of the article is great. Yeah, Pacifiers help prevent SIDS, but nothing has been proved yet. And... when you use the pacifier, also do this, this and this to help prevent SIDS.

"The new AAP guidelines say there is no evidence commercial devices that claim to prevent SIDS are actually effective.

'The most important thing is not to smoke during pregnancy or after it,' Johnson said. 'Also, keep soft objects out of the crib, avoid overheating the room. Keep your baby lightly clothed in a room at a comfortable temperature.' "

SIDS scares the bajeezus out of me because I never know, even if I do everything right, that I go get the baby and he's not breathing.

And they better not attack breastfeeding! All I can say is Hooray For Boobies!

this cracks me up, I was about to email you about this new development in the maze that are the AAP guidelines... wasn't it just last February that they came out in favor of bed-sharing as a means to encourage exclusive breastfeeding? UGH! Hey, I advocate not just breastfeeding but *extended* breastfeeding, and Ms. Walter's comments on The View regarding nursing in public irritated the crap out of me (funny that I only learned about the "nurse-in" from your post the other day), but in this case I wouldn't blame ABC, NBC -- which aired the new guidelines during the Today show, or the rest of the mainstream media. I'm not happy with the AAP at this point in time.

Like Terry, I wanted to read the actual AAP study so I went to the [url=http://www.aap.org/]AAP's website[/url]. Turns out it was a compilation of *many* studies.... and I have a really hard time with the conclusions they reached in their [url=http://www.aap.org/ncepr/revisedsids.pdf]review[/url]. I'm particularly intrigued by the fact that they found enough evidence to warrant recommending pacifier use for preventing SIDS but not for also recommending breastfeeding as a preventive measure. But, what do I know, I'm not a scientist, just a mom with two healthy breastfed sons, neither of which ever wanted anything to do with a pacifier.

I'll try to catch you on the news tonight, Greg... it's right before football, isn't it? ;)

Of course, the most important thing you can do to prevent SIDS is not be black or hispanic or smoke! Yay science!

Seriously, why do they even bother putting out recomendations like these? They still have no earthly idea what causes SIDS, or even what technically classifies a death as SIDS.

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