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 Swaddling a baby may increase the risk for sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, a new analysis concludes. 
 
 The practice of swaddling — wrapping an infant with a light cloth, with the head exposed — has grown in the United States with reports that it promotes better sleep. 
 
 Researchers pooled data from four observational studies of SIDS and swaddling that included 760 SIDS cases and 1,759 controls. 
 
 Over all, swaddling increased the risk for SIDS by about one-third. The risk was greatest in babies sleeping on their stomachs, less in those sleeping on their sides, and least in infants sleeping on their backs. The study is in Pediatrics. 
 
 The lead author, Anna S. Pease, a research associate at the University of Bristol in England, said that the results should be interpreted with caution, because there are few studies of the subject, and the amount of good evidence is limited. 
 
 Still, she said, “We already know that side and prone sleeping are unsafe for young babies, so the advice to place children on their backs for sleep is even more important when parents choose to swaddle them.” 
 
 The risk also increased with the age of the infant. 
 
 “We suggest that parents think about what age they should stop swaddling,” Dr. Pease said. “Babies start to roll over between four and six months, and that point may be the best time to stop.” ||||| A popular way of wrapping babies in blankets could be leading to higher risks of sudden infant death syndrome, also known as SIDS. 
 
 
 
 Swaddling is a technique in which an infant is wrapped securely so only its head is free. Many believe it mimics what the child would feel in the womb, and it helps calm them down. 
 
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 The problem is if the baby moves, swaddling could make it harder for the baby to breathe when it lies on its stomach or side. 
 
 
 
 A new meta-analysis compared four previous studies and found that of all the infants who died of SIDS, 17 percent had been swaddled. 
 
 
 
 The risk of death doubled for children sleeping on their stomach or side when they were swaddled. 
 
 
 
 Sudden death was more common among older infants, though, and the researchers think this could be because they're more likely to move from their back to their side or stomach while sleeping. 
 
 
 
 For obvious ethical reasons, the researchers didn't control who was swaddled and who wasn't –– which means the study is correlational, and other factors may be at play. 
 
 
 
 The researchers do suggest parents stop swaddling before a child turns six months old and should place a baby on its back to sleep. 
 
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 A mother was charged with murder after her baby accidentally died while sleeping on his stomach. 
 
 After a jarring return to work and some prodding from our famously eager pediatrician, my husband and I have started “cry-it-out” with our 4-month-old son—a brutal, if necessary, method where exhausted parents train their babies to sleep by ignoring their cries. Last night, after our baby cried, then quieted himself several times during a 10-hour stretch, I went to fetch him for a morning feed and felt my throat fall into my stomach. 
 
 My baby had wiggled during the night and the fancy swaddle I used to wrap his arms tightly at 7 p.m. was now resting around his neck. My mind flashed with the threat I know loose bedding to be: suffocation, strangulation, death. His eyes peeked out at me through his nearly covered face. 
 
 Five years ago, in the middle of another sleepless stretch with my first son, my parenting fail was by choice. I looked at my 2-month-old baby, strong enough to bust himself loose out of my swaddles yet still unable to control the tremors in his hands or the reflex that made him feel like he was falling all the time. And so, I decided to join the number of parents who hide a dark secret: I turned my baby on his belly and let him sleep, which he did, for hours longer than he ever had before. 
 
 I revisited these and dozens of other errors I’ve made as a parent this morning—because around the same time I was imagining what might have happened had I not picked up my new baby when I did, The Washington Post reported another mother in Virginia had been charged with murder and child neglect for a mistake that led to the death of her son, Jahari. 
 
 Candice Semidey, 25-years-old at the time, was a new mother to a 4-month-old. She fed him, swaddled him, then lay him belly-down on a makeshift bed she fashioned out of a chair cushion and a blanket, according to the Prince William County Police public information officer, Sergeant Jonathan Perok. Semidey went to sleep, but when she woke up, her baby was dead. And according to the Prince William County prosecutor, placing Jahari on his stomach to sleep this way was so negligent it was murder. 
 
 Jahari’s death was unintentional, Perok told The Daily Beast. His mother wasn’t under the influence of any drugs or alcohol. Nothing else about her home concerned police or made them think the baby had otherwise been neglected, Perok said. 
 
 “These actions, however unintentional, were still deemed neglectful in accordance with the code section for felony murder which states, ‘The killing of one accidentally, contrary to the intention of the parties, while in the prosecution of some felonious act,’” Perok wrote in an email. “The underlying felonious act in this case was the felony child neglect.” 
 
 In the criminal complaint, the lead detective wrote that Semidey had acted in a manner “that was so gross, wanton, and culpable” that it showed “a reckless disregard for human life.” The charging documents noted that she had received proper guidance on how to put her son to sleep after his birth. 
 
 Semidey pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect in July of 2015, and was given a suspended sentence of five years. She’ll stay out of prison if she completes a three-year supervised probation. 
 
 Most parents used to put their babies to sleep on their tummies until the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) began telling them to put their infants to sleep on their backs. In 1994, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development began the “Back to Sleep” campaign, a federally funded push to stem fatalities from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). As a result, unexplained sleep deaths in the U.S. have fallen drastically—by more than 50 percent. Still, around 3,500 infants die unexpectedly while sleeping, from SIDS or accidental suffocation. 
 
 But lots of parents still eschew doctors’ advice in exchange for a good night’s sleep. In 1992, about 70 percent of babies slept on their stomachs, according to the National Infant Sleep Position Study. In 2010, that number fell to 13.5 percent. For African-American mothers like Semidey, the rate of stomach sleeping rises to 27.6 percent. 
 
 Is this a crime? Clearly it is in Prince William County. 
 
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 But to charge a grieving mother for murder, for making a mistake that millions of other mothers make every night, seems like a terrifying overreach. And Sergeant Perok told me the charge against Semidey wasn’t exceptional. “We in Prince William County don’t charge it often, but it’s not unusual,” he said. 
 
 The most recent example I could find of a similar charge was in 2010, when a woman was charged with child neglect over the drowning death of her 9-month-old daughter. Julia Sumo had left her daughter in the tub to investigate a burning smell coming from the kitchen. When she returned, her daughter was dead. Sumo was “beside herself with grief” over her “grave mistake,” according to her husband, but the judge said “some recognition has to be given to the fact that a life was lost,” and imposed 60 days of jail time. 
 
 Mothers are expected to be hyper-vigilant at all times, and for good reason: Tiny, vulnerable people depend on us. But every single one of us, even the best mother, has her stories. Every mother has felt the lump in her chest that comes with seeing her baby caught in blankets or finding a toddler who slipped away during the one moment she took her eye away in the supermarket. Every mother has had a moment when she realizes how close she has come to tragedy and feels relief that, this time, her baby is safe.
– Parents are often told to swaddle their newborn babies in order to help them sleep, but a new analysis of studies finds that the practice may increase the risk of SIDS, the New York Times reports. Researchers looked at four studies that examined a total of 760 cases of sudden infant death syndrome, and found that swaddling (wrapping a baby tightly in a blanket in order to simulate the feeling of being in the womb, AOL reports) increased the risk for SIDS by about a third overall. Of the babies who died of SIDS, 17% were swaddled. The biggest risk was in babies asleep on their stomachs. It was less risky for those sleeping on their sides, and the least risky for those sleeping on their backs. Swaddling makes it more difficult for a baby to move, so a baby on his stomach may be more at risk if he is swaddled and his face is pushed into the mattress. The current recommendation is for parents to place babies on their backs to sleep, and the researchers say this is even more important if the baby is swaddled. The researchers also found the risk increased as the age of the babies increased, and as the study notes, it was greatest for babies older than six months—"babies start to roll over between four and six months, and that point may be the best time to stop" swaddling, the lead author says. As for babies swaddled and then put to sleep on their backs, researchers did find a "small but significant risk" of SIDS, the Atlantic reports, and that's likely related to babies who were put to sleep on their backs swaddled, but then rolled over.