A stay-at-home mom has been enduring sleepless nights after discovering the new position her baby has started sleeping in.
Michaela Webb, from northwest Arkansas, posted a clip to her TikTok, @mjwebb333, showing the position she has started finding her 5-month-old daughter Gemma fast asleep in. “POV [point of view]: You made it through peak SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome] age just for your baby to start sleeping like this so you can be even more stressed every night,” Webb wrote alongside the video.
SIDS is a constant worry to every new parent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that, in 2022, the most-recent year for which data is available, there were an estimated 3,700 sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUID) in the United States.
Webb told Newsweek: “Gemma is my second baby, so I’ve been through the anxiety of SIDS once already, but that doesn’t really make it any easier to manage. The most-stressful thing about it is that you can only reduce the risk, never 100 percent eliminate it.”
Webb has always practiced “safe sleep” when it comes to her kids. A 2005 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics noted that, while there is no known way of preventing SIDS, one of the most-effective and easily actionable responses is to ensure babies sleep on their back whenever asleep.
Back sleeping carries a significantly reduced risk of SIDS; stomach sleeping, by comparison, is not recommended among infants; while side-lying position also carries with it an increased risk as a young child may be able to roll onto their stomach.
Gemma is a little older and has developed the ability to roll, but that change has brought with it added stress. “She started sleeping on her stomach as soon as she developed the ability to roll, but she has been scooting herself up to the edge of the bassinet and sleeping with her face in the mesh since she was 2 or 3 months old,” Webb said. “That already stressed me out enough, and then the progression to sleeping on her stomach too just made it even worse.”
Though Gemma’s ability to move herself around indicates her new sleep position should not be too much of a concern, her mom has been struggling with the sudden shift.
“I stress every night and frequently check the monitor for her breathing,” Webb said. “I think once they start sleeping on their stomach is just stressful anyway because you’re so used to them being on their back as a newborn and then it completely changes, basically overnight. “
Webb shared the video, showing Gemma’s new sleep position, to her TikTok because she felt it was something that would resonate with other parents of young infants.
“Most parents are terrified of something happening to their baby, and I think that’s why the video is so relatable,” she said.
The clip has since gone viral with over 518,000 views and counting. One mom watching the video commented: “My 6 month old just recently started doing this girl can’t give me a break. I’m already a ball of anxiety bro.”
Another wrote: “The second my son learned how to roll and then roll back over, he began sleeping on his tummy. [was] very stressful.”
While Webb is still likely to suffer the odd sleepless night and is being hypervigilant, the response to her post has helped. “I don’t think I actually even realized how relatable when I made it, but it’s definitely shown me that many babies do this exact same thing,” she said.
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