Back to sleep.  SLEEP.  Babies can and should be in any old position while
awake.
What we consider pleasing head shape is a cultural variable.  Some peoples
have a custom of wrapping newborns' heads in a long strip of cloth to
encourage formation of an elongated skull, or a high flat forehead.  We have
been accustomed to those round occiputs for years because babies have been
sleeping on their stomachs.  Chinese babies with round occiputs are objects
of pity-- how lovely that baby is from the front, too bad her head isn't
flatter in back, she could have been so pretty otherwise!

Some people never deposit their children alone on a flat firm surface for
sleep either.

I was not aware that torticollis was an artifact of sleep position.  I
thought it was congenital.

Anybody done any studies on what it does to babies' neuromotor development
to be put in an infant seat, or to live in a bucket-style car seat?  Not to
mention what it does to their social development, never to be cuddled, just
carried from place to place like a breast pump in a travel case?

Until I see the evidence to the contrary I will continue to inform parents
that sleeping in the prone position increases the risk of a baby dying of
SIDS very significantly.  Of course I also talk about smoking, and about
breastfeeding (THERE! not off topic after all) in the same context.  Our
rate in Norway dropped by about 50% within the year after the supine
sleeping recommendation came, and it has stayed down, despite BF rates being
high always, and no change in smoking rates in the same period.

Rachel Myr
whose two children survived infancy despite sleeping prone, and on baby
lambskins-- but I wouldn't do that today.
Kristiansand, Norway

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