Thank you, Catherine, for the info on carseats and oxygen saturation rates.

Surely this is important enough to use as an argument to persuade mothers NOT to keep their babies in plastic buckets all day? If we can alert parents to the dangers of putting babies to sleep on their tummies, why can't we do the same for this issue?

On a personal note....
When my son was about six months old we moved to an apartment complex and were delighted to find close neighbours who also had a baby boy of the same age. Unfortunately, we were rarely able to get together because their child was always sick - earaches, colds, you name it. Needless to say, he wasn't breastfed. The mother always remarked on how healthy Dan seemed to be, and of course I told her that I put it down to his having the benefit of my milk. I encouraged her to attend the LLL meetings that were being hosted by another Leader who also lived in the complex and she seemed receptive to the information, so I was a bit disappointed when she chose NOT to nurse her second child. I just bit my tongue and repeated the mantra (under my breath!) "This is not MY baby."

Like their older child, the new baby was constantly in either a car seat or an infant seat. We didn't have slings in those days - 1976 - but enough of us were using Snugglies to draw odd remarks from passers by, so the idea of actually carrying babies wasn't altogether strange.

When their new baby was about three months old, tragedy struck. It was December and  my friend was out shopping, running from one store to the next. She was talking up a storm to the boys, who were strapped securely into their back-seat carseats, until she noticed that the little one seemed to have fallen asleep. At the next stop she checked on him to see if he was comfortable before lifting out the carseat - but he wasn't breathing. She did CPR, but even the medics who arrived on the scene shortly afterwards were not able to do anything to revive him.

The official cause of death was SIDS. In the light of these new studies, I am now wondering if being in a carseat for a considerable portion of his life might not be, at least, a contributing factor. I guess we will never know.

warmly,
Norma Ritter, IBCLC
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