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A small woven bassinet could be the answer to the dilemma of how to let babies sleep with their parents without being harmed.
The flax "wahakura" (waha - carrying in a comfortable way, kura - precious small object) is being tried out with 100 Maori families on the East Coast.
And its inventor, Dr David Tipene-Leach, says it is protecting babies while allowing Maori parents to maintain their cultural tradition of keeping their babies between them in bed.
"Mothers are hungry for them. They love them," he said.
"Whilst mums and dads are not keen to take their babies out of the bed, they are aware that every health worker in officialdom is telling them to do so.
"They are not doing it - they are sleeping with their babies but with a sense of unease. So this has provided them with a sense of security."
Dr Tipene-Leach, a general practitioner at Te Taiwhenua o Heretaunga in Hastings, developed the in-bed bassinet as a way of preventing sudden infant death syndrome.
But the authors of a new book on child homicide, Dr Marie Connolly and Mike Doolan, say it could also protect babies from parental neglect through alcohol or drugs.
"Babies may struggle to survive being rolled upon when sleeping alongside an overtired parent or a parent in a drug- or alcohol-induced sleep," they say.
They point to a dramatic drop in babies dying in such circumstances in the American state of Illinois, where the state Government gives a cot or crib to every family assessed as having a vulnerable baby.
However, Dr Tipene-Leach said parents with wahakura were given strict instructions not to use them when they were drunk, on drugs or extremely tired.
"The idea is based on the fact that the biggest risk factor [for Sids] is bed-sharing where there is smoking in the pregnancy," he said.
"In this country those who smoke are more commonly Maori women, and those who bed-share are more commonly Maori, Pacific and Asian families, although not exclusively.
"So you get that together with not the right socio-economic group and poor access to care, and you are at high risk."
He thought at first that the wahakura was a new idea, but Maori women have made similar "Moses baskets" since pre-European times.
