Safer Sleep Milestones
The Safer Sleep Milestones card is for babies spending time on a neonatal unit. The card is a way of celebrating when babies can be cared for in ways that match the national advice for safer sleep.
Sometimes babies on the neonatal unit are cared for in ways that don’t match up with the national advice for safer sleep. There is always a medical reason for this. By the time they leave the unit, all babies should follow the safer sleep advice, unless specifically told otherwise by staff on the unit.
Seeing how the baby is being slept on the unit sometimes leads families to think that this should continue when they get home, or that this is how their baby is most comfortable or safe. The safer sleep milestones card also acts as a reminder to unit staff to model safer sleep while babies are still on the unit so that this can continue at home.
There are five milestones on the card with a space to tick each one off when it is reached.
The card has been developed in collaboration with the University of Bristol’s Baby Sleep Project, the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Bliss and The Lullaby Trust. Parents, neonatal staff and researchers have worked together to produce the card and it is now ready for piloting!
The research will evaluate how the card is used, received and acted on. Then we will see if we can test it out in a trial to see if it works to keep babies safer while they sleep.
