A new BBC report highlights how unregulated voices online are promoting alternative sleep advice that could put babies at risk of serious harm — even death.
I find that almost impossible to comprehend. Because we already know how to save babies’ lives. We learned it the hardest way imaginable.
After my son Sebastian died from cot death in 1991, I made it my mission to ensure other families did not endure the same devastation.
The message we fought for was simple and clear: babies should sleep on their backs. That became the “Back to Sleep” campaign — and it worked. Deaths fell dramatically.
Thousands upon thousands of babies lived who might otherwise have died. That clarity saved lives, which is why this new confusion is so alarming.
The BBC report shows how online influencers and self-styled “sleep experts” are offering advice that can blur or even contradict established safe sleep guidance.
Parents — especially those navigating the early, exhausting days with a newborn — are being pulled into a fog of conflicting information. And when it comes to cot death, confusion is dangerous.
Sudden infant death syndrome does not give warnings. It does not allow second chances. It is silent, sudden and devastating.
That is why the original campaign succeeded: it removed ambiguity. It told parents exactly what to do. Now we risk undoing that.
I am horrified at the thought that the advice we fought so hard to establish — advice that helped save so many lives — is being diluted in ways that could endanger a new generation of babies. This is not about blame.
Parenting is hard enough without fear layered on top. But it is about responsibility — especially for those who present themselves as experts.
We learnt how to save babies. Why are we putting them at risk again? - Ann Diamond
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If you are giving advice about infant sleep, it must be grounded in evidence, not trends, not personal preference, and certainly not social media engagement. That is why I myself didn’t give the advice.
I called together experts (even flying those from Australia who’d proved the back to sleep advice worked with a groundbreaking study and then campaign) and forced a meeting with the Department of Health. I tackled them to get the campaign going.
Faced with the facts, and on a meeting of the cleverest minds, they agreed, and the campaign is still the single most successful lifesaving campaign ever in the UK.
It was adopted by most other countries and had the same lifesaving effect. 35 years ago, when my baby died, the cot death rate was 4 or 5 a day. It was between 2-2,500 a year.
Within a year, that number fell to 300 and continues to fall. We cannot allow decades of progress to slip away because the message has become muddled. The lesson of cot death was hard learned. It costs lives to understand it.
We owe it to every parent, and every child, to keep that message clear, consistent and uncompromising. Put babies on their backs to sleep. It is still the safest way. And it always will be.