NEW YORK CITY — Each year, about 50 babies across the city suffocate in their cribs or in beds they share with their parents.
In an effort to lower that number, the city launched a new campaign to better educate parents about the best ways to keep newborns safe while sleeping.
Parents should make sure their newborns sleep in cribs, not in their beds. Babies should be placed on their backs, and cribs should be covered with just a fitted sheet - no pillows, blankets or other soft objects, according to child welfare experts.
"It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. You wake up and check on your baby, but she isn’t breathing — and it’s too late to help her," Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote in an op-ed Monday.
Infants between 28 days and 4 months old, pre-term babies and babies born to young mothers are at highest risk for sleep-related injury and death, a 2013 report showed.
Black non-Hispanic infants in impoverished areas were at highest risk, according to that study.
Between 2004 and 2011 the city tallied 386 sleep-related injury deaths. About two-thirds of those babies were not found lying on their backs, which is the recommended position, and more than half had been sharing a bed with another adult or child.
In many of these cases, excessive bedding was often present, meaning the fatal combination of environmental factors led to the young child's demise.
“Many parents may not know that sharing a bed and other unsafe sleep practices put babies at risk,” said the mayor. “We must step up efforts to make families aware of the importance of safe sleep practices."
Numerous city agencies joined the mayor in calling for education on safer sleeping practices for infants including the Administration for Children Services, the Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
