Health officials urge safe sleep practice to lower infant deaths amid Baby Safety Month

BERRIEN COUNTY, Mich. (WSBT) — September is Baby Safety Month, and health officials are highlighting the top ways you can keep your child safe during their first year of life.

Berrien County health officials are emphasizing safe sleep practices.

Most babies are able to gain some control of their neck after year one.

Before that, managing how and where the child sleeps is essential for their wellbeing.

In Michigan, sleep related causes and car crashes are two of the most common causes of infant death.

In an effort to educate parents and caretakers, the Berrien County Health Department uses Baby Safety Month to teach safe practices.

Health officials say the rule of thumb for safe sleep are the ABC’s. The acronym follows a check list:

• Alone: Make sure the child does not have any items surrounding them
• Back: The baby should sleep on their back
• Crib: The baby should be sleeping in a crib

Berrien County Family Program Manager Miranda Bronicki Dopp said, “In general, the trends is around one in five infant deaths being due to some kind of sleep related death. That can be something like accidental suffocation. So baby getting trapped between a bed and a wall or in the cushions of a couch. That can also be something like SIDS where we don’t have the exact reasoning behind it always.”

Bronicki Dopp leads the family programs and education groups in Berrien County where caretakers can take courses on positive parenting and adolescent parenting, and her most urgent advice revolves around the ABC’s.

“So with that, we’re looking at you can remember the ABC’s — alone, on their back, and in a crib. Now alone does mean just for the sleep area. So being in the bedroom with you, but in their own sleep area is really our best recommendation there. Being on the back, that’s the non-negotiable even if they start rolling around and they decide to roll and sleep on their stomach, you still want to place them on their back when you’re putting them down,” said Bronicki Dopp.

The second leading cause of infant death unrelated to medical issues is car crashes. To bring those numbers down, as of April of this year a new law requires all car seats be rear-facing.

“We get a lot of parents concerned about the legs staying rear facing for that long because their legs are growing and so they tend to be kind of start having to pull them in a little bit as they’re sitting in that rear facing position, and I just want to make sure parents know that this is, we have seen in the data and everything with car accidents that that is still the safest position,” said Bronicki Dopp.

The Berrien County Health Department does offer free portable cribs to eligible households through the Baby’s Own Bed program. More information about the free program can be found on the

Berrien County Health Department website.