Back, firm, clear, smoke-free
Put the baby on their back. Then look at everything else in the cot and take most of it out. Safe sleep is a rule, not a look.
Raising Children frames it as breathing. Airways open, or they are not. A safe surface, space, position and place lowers the risk of sudden unexpected death in infancy, which includes SIDS and fatal sleep accidents. You do this every sleep, including the nap you think is too short to matter, and including the one at a grandparent's house.
Firm, flat and level. A mattress in a cot or portacot, bassinet, baby box, pepi-pod or co-sleeper that meets the Australian Consumer Goods (Infant Sleep Products) Safety Standard 2024. Tight fitted sheet.
Waterproof protector that is not soft and padded. Well kept, clean, firm.
Unsafe is soft, curved, inclined, uneven, unstable. The list is concrete. Sheepskin.
A couch, with or without you on it. Pillows, beanbags, waterbeds, makeshift bedding. A pram used as a bed.
Slings, swings and bouncers as sleep places. A child car seat. The seat is the right object in a crash and the wrong object as a cot, because an incline makes breathing harder.
On a long drive, check breathing and stop. Then take the baby out of the seat when you are home, even if they finally slept.
Clear space around the face and head. No doona, pillow, nest, lounger, bumper, mattress padding, soft toy, sleep positioner. Covers light, tucked to chest level, feet at the bottom of the cot.
Or a safe infant sleeping bag instead of covers. Nothing around the neck. No beanie.
A hat overheats a baby fast. The room not hot, not freezing. Heater or cooler moderate and not blowing on them.
No electric blanket, no hot water bottle.
About 30 cm of clear space around a cot. Blind cords, plastic, mosquito nets and electrical cords are how babies get into trouble they cannot tell you about. If you ever co-sleep, the same page says the surface has to fit everyone with clear space around the baby.
Read that properly before you do it half asleep. The default you can set up tonight is a separate safe surface.
Smoke and vapour out. The link with SUDI is strong even when parents smoke away from the baby. Third-hand junk on you still counts.
Quitline is 137 848. GP or child health nurse if you need a person rather than a phone.
On the back. Reflexes that protect the airway, swallowing, stirring, waking, work better there. Less rebreathing of spent air.
More space around nose and mouth. When they eventually roll, you will need the next instruction from the same source, not a tacked-on myth. Until then, back.
You will be tired enough to leave them in the bouncer. Don't. Move them.
Source: Raising Children Network