Factors associated with bed sharing and sleep position in Thai neonates

Abstract

Background Sleep in a supine position and in a bed separate from but proximate to adults is recommended, in several Western countries, to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Cultural differences and a lower rate of SIDS in Asian populations may affect concern with this problem and thus infant sleeping arrangements. Objective To study bed sharing and sleep position in Thai neonates and the relationship to infant and maternal characteristics. Methods A cross‐sectional survey based on interviews with parents of infants aged 21 days old, was conducted under the Prospective Cohort Study of Thai Children. Results Of the total sample, 2236/3692 (60.6%) infants shared a bed with their parents. Sixty per cent of the parents placed their infants to sleep in a supine position, 32.2% on their side and 4.9% in a prone position. Bed sharing was associated with older maternal age, higher education, Muslim mother, and with work status of professional career or unemployed. Placing the infants to sleep in a prone position was associated with infant birth weight of greater than 2500 g, older maternal age, higher education, Buddhist mother, mother with professional career and middle‐class household economic status. Conclusions Infant bed sharing is a common practice in the Thai culture, as in other Asian countries. The prone sleep position is less common than in Western populations. The main factor associated with both bed sharing and putting infants to sleep in the prone position was a higher maternal socioeconomic status (SES), in contrast to previous studies in some Western countries in which both practices were associated with low maternal SES. Cultural differences may play an important role in these different findings.

Pattern of Sleep in Infants and Toddlers Visiting at a Teaching Hospital in Lalitpur

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Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) risk reduction and infant sleep location – Moving the discussion forward

“…Morelli et al 1992;Huang and Cheng 2006;Anuntaseree et al 2008;Tan et al 2009). Although solitary infant sleep (crib and/or separate room) is a current Western parental priority (Ball and Russell 2012) bed-sharing is common among certain sub-groupsparticularly breastfeeding mother-infant dyads (Ball 2003;McCoy et al 2004;Lahr et al 2007;Blair et al 2010), recent immigrant populations from non-Euro-American countries (Gantley et al 1993;Farooqi et al 1993; Rice and Naksook 1998), and culturally distinct minority groups (Tuohy et al 1998;Eades et al 1999;Abel et al 2001;Patterson et al 2002).…”

Evaluation of the Knowledge and Attitude Changes of Mothers in Neonatal Care

“…One of the traditional practices is covering the face of the infant with a cheesecloth (19). Our study showed that mothers cover the face of their infants for various reasons such as putting them to sleep, protecting from dust.…”