October is Infant Safe Sleep Awareness Month.
It’s an annual campaign to inform parents how to protect their babies from suffocation. Deborah Lopez is a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. She says parents should follow the “ABCs” of sleeping.
“The baby should be sleeping alone, always placed on their back, and should be sleeping in the crib with a firm mattress covered with a tightly fitted sheet, and that’s all,” she said.
This means parents should not decorate cribs with blankets and stuffed animals that could suffocate the baby. Nor should parents take their children to bed with them. Lopez says 143 children under the age of one died last year in Illinois from unsafe sleep practices.