SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)

What is "SIDS"?

SIDS is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and these are any unexplained death of a child from newborn to one year of age. It's often commonly referred to as crib death because these children are sometimes found unexplicably in their crib after sleeping, dead without an explained cause. The incidence of SIDS really peaks between two and four months of age and then decreases after four months of age. And we don't really know what causes SIDS but the common thought is that there's something wrong with, in certain predisposed people, an immature brain stem and that when you're doing little things at night like stopping breathing for brief periods of time and these children you don't get the jump start with their brain stem. So I think of it as a two head hypothesis, you have to be pre-disposition and then, on top of it, you may be in a postion that may make it more likely that SIDS occurs.

At what age is my baby no longer at risk for SIDS?

After a year we really don't worry about SIDS anymore, but really the incidences of SIDS drops off greatly after four months of age and over 90% of the cases of SIDS occur in under six months of age.