Safe sleep

Safe sleep is the set of habits pediatric guidelines recommend for every sleep, nap or night. The baby goes down on their back, alone, on a firm flat surface that is designed for infant sleep. The sleep space should be empty: no pillows, no bumpers, no loose blankets, no stuffed animals and no positioners. These are not styling choices, they come from decades of research into how infants breathe and regulate temperature while asleep.

In practice this means picking a crib, bassinet or play yard that meets current safety standards and using only the mattress or pad it was designed for. A sleep sack replaces loose blankets once the baby is out of a swaddle. Many families also room-share, keeping the baby's sleep space in the parents' room for the first several months, without bringing the baby into the adult bed. Room temperature is kept moderate rather than warm, since overheating is one of the risk factors guidelines flag.

The most common slips are well-meaning: propping a bottle and walking away, letting a swaddled baby who has started rolling stay swaddled, adding a blanket during a night wake-up, or using a hand-me-down crib that does not meet current spacing standards. Guidelines describe what lowers risk, not a guarantee, so treat safe sleep as a routine to repeat consistently every time the baby sleeps, not a one-time setup.