When Is Your Baby Ready To... (Sleep)

...snooze on her tummy?
Since 1992, when the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) first recommended putting babies to sleep on their backs, the annual SIDS rate has decreased by about 50 percent. While some moms are ignoring the recommendation, most of us have gotten the message so loud and clear that the first time I discovered my 4-month-old on her stomach it was hard not to freak out.

What you need to know Once your baby has the upper-body strength to roll over regularly, at around 5 months, he has the strength to move away from a suffocation hazard, and the SIDS risk goes down. (The greatest risk is during the first six months.)

"I tell my patients: You should still put them down on their backs, but what babies do in the middle of the night is their business," says Jennifer Shu, M.D., director of the newborn nursery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and coauthor of Heading Home With Your Newborn.