Mother-infant room-sharing linked to reduced sleep duration, unsafe sleep practices

Despite AAP recommendations that parents share rooms with infants for the first year, room-sharing after 4 months of age was associated with reduced sleep duration, as well as an increased risk of unsafe sleep practices associated with sleep-related infant death. "The importance of getting an adequate night's sleep has been increasingly recommended by professional societies including the AAP and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine," Ian M. Paul, MD, MSc, from the Divisions of Pediatrics and Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine, and colleagues wrote. To examine the connection between infant-parent room-sharing and sleep outcomes of infants, the researchers analyzed data collected in the Intervention Nurses Start Infants Growing on Healthy Trajectories study, which aimed to prevent obesity.