Of all the things that scared me when my daughter was a baby -- and trust me, there were many -- SIDS was the one monster I just couldn't shake. I would find myself waking in the middle of the night with a start, unable to go back to sleep until I'd snuck into her nearby nursery and checked to make sure she was still breathing. Call me neurotic. Or just call me a parent.
SIDS is called Sudden Infant Death Syndrome for a reason -- because we don't know when it's coming. Nothing could be more terrifying.
But there is good news for parents. These days, we actually know how to prevent SIDS.
The more doctors look at SIDS cases, the more they know about risk factors. And the more they know about risk factors, the more power we have to NOT put our kids at risk.
If you want any chance of getting a good night's sleep, you're going to want to check everything off this list to prevent SIDS.
Go ahead, some of them might surprise you ...
Have you done everything on the list? What were you missing?
Image by Jeanne Sager