Infant car seats can cut off air to babies
There is no question that properly installed infant car seats save lives.
The study, done with 200 two-day-old babies in Slovenia, showed that infants placed in cribs got more oxygen than those who spent prolonged periods of time in either car seats or in car beds, which are designed for tiny or premature babies.
Among the findings: The percentage of time the babies spent with oxygen saturation levels below 95 percent was, on average, significantly higher for those in car seats (23.9 percent) compared to those in cribs (6.5 percent).
The moral here is not to dump your car seat. Instead, the authors note, parents should limit the their babies spend in those carriers to when they are on the road.
But the researchers say a baby's breathing can be compromised, as airways can become occluded and chest walls compressed in the angled position of an infant car seat.
Say the authors: "The use of these devices should ... be restricted to protection from injury and death in traffic accidents and they should never serve as a replacement for a crib. In addition, further modifications of car safety devices are clearly needed to minimize the respiratory compromise that has been consistently documented in current models."
Comments
Interesting- our ped had actually recommended my daughter sleep in her car seat when she was a newborn because she had acid reflux and needed to sleep at an angled position to help alleviate her symptoms and the possibility of choking.
Posted by: sdr | August 26, 2009 3:11 PM
Would that include an infant swing?
The study did not look at infant swings.
Posted by: Candace | August 26, 2009 5:28 PM