Wrapping puts babies at risk

By KATHERINE HOBY

Wrapping baby up warm - it is a natural maternal instinct, but experts say that it is something we need to reverse, as thermal stress is putting babies' lives at risk.

An Otago Paediatric Physiology Group spokesman, Dr David Bolton, said it had long been recognised that temperature played a part in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

A recent survey of parent knowledge in Britain showed that parents tend to overheat their children.

Almost two-thirds of 200 families did not know what temperature was needed to keep their babies comfortable and 64 per cent of the rooms checked in the survey were too hot.

Doctors suggested keeping a room at a temperature of between 16 and 20 degrees C, preferably at 16 or 17 degrees.

Dr Bolton said maternal and parental instinct was to keep babies warm and to wrap them up securely.

"It is a very natural maternal instinct that baby must be kept warm and it seems it is particularly so in New Zealand.

"The reverse is actually true and the instinct, well-meaning though it is, is dangerous."

In spite of advice in recent years, parents were still keeping babies wrapped too tightly in their cots, he said.

The British research, showing the risk of cot death can be increased by babies being kept too warm, was carried out by the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths.

It is believed heat can disrupt a baby's breathing and encourage bacterial growth, which can lead to toxins.

Dr Bolton said research by the Otago group showed that if a baby was simply too hot it was in no immediate danger. But if the baby was allowed to overheat, and already had a fever, there was an increased risk of cot death.

Babies were much more able, as we all are, to generate heat if cold, than to dissipate heat if hot, he said. "The safety zone below a comfortable temperature is very wide, but above, it is not."

If the baby's head, face, forehead and hands were kept uncovered in a cot there was a means for it to lose heat if necessary.

"Honestly, with the best of intentions you would have to wonder what parents are thinking sometimes," he said.

"If you stand in baby's room and decide what clothes you would wear then baby doesn't need much more than that."

The national paediatrician for Plunket, Dr Russell Wills, said a baby needed only one more layer than the number of layers an adult was wearing, if that.

A baby could not kick off blankets or cool itself if hot easily, he said.

A 1997 study of more than 500,000 babies in Northern England and in Bristol, western England, of which 325 had died of SIDS, revealed the link between overheating and cot deaths. Mothers of those babies had been much more concerned about their babies being too cold than too hot.

HOW TO AVOID COT DEATH

* Place the baby on its back to sleep

* Do not smoke during pregnancy

* Do not allow anyone to smoke in the same room as a baby

* Keep the baby's head uncovered

* Place the child at the foot of the cot to prevent wriggling down under the covers

* The best way to tell if a baby is too hot is by feeling its tummy. If it is hot and sweaty to the touch, then remove a layer of bedding or clothing

* Additional reporting, London Press Service