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Kids in Adults' Beds
Kids in Adults' Beds
Children younger than 2 face a greater risk of smothering when sleeping with an adult. By Brian P. McDonough. This audio file plays for 0 minutes and 39 seconds.
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We've all done it: Our child cries and is unable to be consoled, or our toddler walks down the hallway into the bedroom in the middle of the night. It is very difficult to turn down your child's pleas to jump into mommy and daddy's bed. But according to a new report, adult beds are extremely unsafe for children under two. Over an eight year period, from 1990 to 1998, researchers looked at 515 deaths in children under two. One hundred twenty-one of the children died as a result of being smothered accidentally by an adult. Over 394 children died as a result of strangulation or suffocation caused by entrapment of child's head in various structures of the bed.
I am Dr. Brian McDonough.