Safe Sleep 7 (La Leche League / McKenna / Blair)
7 conditions that change bed-sharing from risk to safety
Seven conditions under which bed-sharing has been associated with the same or lower risk profile as separate sleeping. Non-smoking, sober, breastfeeding, full-term healthy baby, back-sleeping, lightly dressed, firm bed with no soft bedding near the face.
The Safe Sleep 7 is a set of conditions developed by researchers including McKenna, La Leche League International, and analyzed against datasets including the work of Peter Blair. The conditions describe when bed-sharing has been associated with the same or lower risk profile as separate sleeping.
The seven conditions: the mother does not smoke, is sober (no alcohol or sedating drugs), is breastfeeding, has a healthy full-term baby, places the baby on its back, the baby is lightly dressed and unswaddled, and the bed is firm with no pillows, gaps, or soft bedding near the baby's face. When all seven conditions are met, the SIDS risk associated with bed-sharing drops substantially in the available data. The Bombard et al.
CDC paper in 2018 documented the trends in safe sleep practices. The framework gives a structured way for parents to assess whether their specific bed-sharing context is the kind that the research supports.
7
Specific safety conditions
Substantial
Risk reduction when all met
2018
CDC Bombard et al. paper
Why it matters
Bed-sharing is not safe or unsafe in the abstract. Specific conditions change the risk profile dramatically, and Safe Sleep 7 gives parents a checklist that the research actually supports.
This is one finding from the research library behind How to Birth a Mother. Everything here traces back to a study, a dataset, or a systematic review.