SIDS - Sudden Infant Death.  Every parent's nightmare.  According to the American SIDS Institute, SIDS is "sudden death of an infant under one year of age which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including performance of an autopsy and review of clinical history. 

In a typical situation parents check on their supposedly sleeping infant to find him or her dead. This is the worse tragedy parents can face, a tragedy which leaves them with a sadness and a feeling of vulnerability that lasts throughout their lives. Since medicine can not tell them why their baby died, they blame themselves and often other innocent people. Their lives and those around them are changed forever. "

The Back to Sleep campaign began in 1994 and is sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the SIDS Alliance, and the Association of SIDS and Infant Mortality Programs.

The Back to Sleep campaign is  named for its recommendation to place healthy babies on their backs to sleep. Placing babies on their backs to sleep reduces the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), also known as "crib death." This campaign has been successful in promoting infant back sleeping to parents, family members, child care providers, health professionals, and all other caregivers of infants.

Since 1994, the United States has reduced the infant deaths due to SIDS by 50%! However, it is a cause of death for infants 1 - 6 months of age.

African-American infants are two times more likely to die of SIDS than white infants, and Native Americans are about three times more likely than whites. More boys than girls fall victim to SIDS. Other potential risk factors include:

• smoking, drinking, or drug use during pregnancy
• poor prenatal care
• prematurity or low birth-weight
• mothers younger than 20
• smoke exposure following birth
• stomach sleeping

For additional information about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, click through to the National Institute of Child Health & Health Development