In March this year I was lucky enough to be invited to meet Tony Nelson who
was going to be chatting very informally to some of the members of the
Sudden and Neonatal Death Society.  He had been emigrated from Zimbabwe to
New Zealand and been involved in the original research on SIDS in New
Zealand which at that time had had one of the highest rates in the world.  I
could only stay an hour, but of course it was fascinating.  They had had to
publish the results of what they found even before the end of their research
because the correlation of SIDS with prone sleeping was so compelling.  He
said that every country that subsequently advised mothers NOT to put their
infants to sleep on their stomachs managed to halve the rate of SIDS.  I
believe the Royal College of Midwives in the U.K. now advises that babies
should be put to sleep on their BACKS  (perhaps someone in the U.K. could
confirm this?)  Other risk factors were maternal smoking, and NOT
breastfeeding.  And yes, co-sleeping was also thought to increase the risk.
This causes a problem for us, doesn't it? - we need more research. The
possibility of the baby overheating was strongly implicated in SIDS and he
hypothesised that this might be more likely to occur during prone sleeping,
and with co-sleeping, and if the parents smoked.

I particularly wanted to know about co-sleeping and "sleep-training"
(leaving the baby to cry for gradually increasing lengths of time to
encourage sleeping through the night) as it affected SIDs rates and what he
said was interesting.  His two children were born in New Zealand and he said
that neighbouring women had urged his wife to leave their first baby to cry
(to "train" the baby to sleep through the night) from a very early age.
They were (fortunately!) not able to do this, but it seemed to be common
practice (sorry, New Zealand Lacnetters - this is anecdotal of course!) and
I wonder whether there are higher rates of SIDS in parts of the world where
babies are left to cry.   Tony Nelson also went on to say that the research
is continuing in other parts of the world and some interesting findings are
coming up - e g in Hong Kong one-third of babies sleep with their mothers,
smoking rates are high, but rates of SIDS are low.

Obviously, the answers are not all in yet but, until they are, my personal
preference is still definitely biased towards the logic of James McKenna's
research (where can I lay my hands on what Katherine Dettwyler says?)

Pamela, Zimbabwe