Babies and sleep safety
This page is part of a collection of short articles called Brief & simple, which together make up a quick summary of The Possums Sleep Program in plain language. For comprehensive information and support, please go to The essentials section of The Possums Sleep Program, and begin to work your way through the program's online text and videos.
Your baby should always be placed on their back to sleep.
Babies who are younger than six months of age need to sleep in the same room as you or their carer, day and night.
There are other important things to know, too, about how to keep your baby as safe as possible during sleep. For example, if you think you might drop off to sleep yourself, going to sleep on a couch with your baby is risky. It's safer to lie down with your baby on a mattress which you've made safe.
Some families shouldn't share their bed, but most can if they know how to do so safely.
If you'd like to share your bed with your baby - and most humans around the world do - then you just need to know how to do this in a way that keeps your baby as safe as possible. For most parents it's not bedsharing that places babies at greater risk, but rather sharing a bed in an unsafe way.
You can find lots more about sleeping baby as safely as possible in the section of The Possums Sleep Program called Safer sleep: place + position.
Acknowledgements
The photo above by Rob Mank is from the Baby Sleep Info Source which has an archives of photos of parents sharing the bed with their baby in a way that is as safe as possible. This fabulous website is full of evidence-based information about sleeping baby as safely as possible.
I'm grateful to Professor Sophie Havighurst, Ros June, and Caroline Ma at Mindful, The University of Melbourne, for their feedback on the articles in the Brief & simple section of The Possums Sleep Program. They helped to keep the language plain and the concepts as accessible as possible. For comprehensive information and support, please go to The essentials section of The Possums Sleep Program, and begin to work your way through the program's online text and videos.
Recommended resources
Always put babies down to sleep on their backs (with a word about rolling and reflux, too)
How to keep the place where your baby sleeps as safe as possible
When your breastfeeding or breast milk feeding baby comes into bed with you
