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Sharing a room with your baby: how it reduces SUDI risk

Where your baby sleeps is a personal choice. It’s best made after you think about your own family’s needs and situation.

But it’s recommended that you sleep with your baby in a safe cot next to your bed for the first year of life, or at least for the first six months. This kind of room-sharing, with separate beds for you and baby, has been shown to reduce the risk of sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and fatal sleeping accidents.

If your baby sleeps in a separate room from you, check your baby regularly to ensure that baby stays on their back and baby’s head and face stay uncovered. Babies who can roll can find their own sleep positions, but they should be put to sleep on their backs.

Your baby should always sleep in a safe cot, whether baby is sleeping in your room or somewhere else. Car seats, prams, bouncinettes, hammocks, bean bags, sofas and pillows aren’t safe sleeping environments. You shouldn’t put your baby to sleep in places like this.

Room-sharing in separate beds: other advantages

Parents who share rooms with their babies and have their babies in cots next to their beds say it has the following advantages:

  • You can be close and respond quickly when your baby wakes.
  • You can check on your baby when you want to during the night.
  • It’s easier to breastfeed your baby when baby wakes in the night.

And parents also say that room-sharing in separate beds has these advantages over co-sleeping with baby:

  • You get better sleep. Babies sleep very lightly, and their movements can disturb a parent sleeping in the same bed.
  • If babies are used to settling in their own beds, it’s easier for them to sleep away from their parents at child care centres or in the care of friends or relatives.
  • It’s easier to start babies off in their own beds than to change the sleeping arrangements at a later stage.

Supported By

  • Department of Social Services

Raising Children Network is supported by the Australian Government. Member organisations are the Parenting Research Centre and the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute with The Royal Children’s Hospital Centre for Community Child Health.

Member Organisations

  • Parenting Research Centre
  • The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne
  • Murdoch Children's Research Institute

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