by Doug Hardy CTNewsJunkie
HARTFORD, CT – A week after filing federal legislation to ban weighted sleep products for babies, US Sen. Richard Blumenthal was at the Legislative Office Building telling reporters that he wasn’t going to wait to get the word out about the danger associated with using weighted sleep products with infants.
According to the latest incident data, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has identified five infant fatalities involving weighted sleep products out of 13 incidents from April 2020 through April 2024.
One grieving parent said their nearly 3-month-old son was wearing a weighted sleep swaddle: “I laid him to sleep and when I left the room I was able to see his face. When I returned, he was face down. I believe he turned and couldn’t turn back from the weight of the sleep sack. He passed away.”
The deaths fall under the term “Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths,” or SUIDs, which is described as the sudden and unexpected death of babies who are less than a year old, and in which the cause was not obvious before investigation.
These deaths often occur during sleep or in the baby’s sleep area. Annually, about 3,500 babies die under SUIDs circumstances.
“There is an investigation underway by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, as there is by the Federal Trade Commission, because these products may be dangerous. But I’m not waiting for the CPSC or the FTC to finish their investigations,” Blumenthal said. “I’m warning parents now because the stakes are so high and the risks are so great.”
Blumenthal’s legislation, which was filed Aug. 1, is titled “Safeguarding Infants From Dangerous Sleep Act.” He said if it passes it will ban weighted sleep products for infants.
On Friday he was joined by Dr. Barbara Ziogas, president of the Connecticut chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and Kristen Moriarty, a second-year fellow in maternal fetal medicine at the University of Connecticut. Moriarty held her infant son, Francis, throughout the event.
“We have a warning for parents. Be aware and beware of weighted sleep products. Weighted blankets, swaddles, other weighted sleep products create unacceptable risks,” Blumenthal said. “They’re still on the market because of Dreamland Baby and Nested Bean. But they are off the shelves of Amazon, Walmart, and Target, rightly so, because all of the experts say, avoid weighted sleep products.”
Weighted sleep products, Blumenthal said, constrain a baby’s movement.
“They can prevent the baby from breathing,” he said. “They can cause SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. I have raised the alarm about these weighted infant sleep products because they pose a clear and present danger to children.”
Blumenthal said that marketing targets exhausted parents with newborns, and while he understands parents are exhausted and desperate for sleep, “these weighted sleep products are not the answer.”
He said the advertisements, the pitches, the promotions that you’ve seen that say they are safe, according to some standards,” Blumenthal said. “There are no standards that justify these weighted sleep products, whether they are weighted blankets or swaddles or sleep sacks. The sleep sacks are particularly problematic. But all of these weighted sleep products, whether they are blankets or swaddles, create the kinds of risks that should be avoided.”
Holding up one of the weighted sleep sacks, Blumenthal said that on a baby’s chest it “can cause bleeding problems, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, because the weight on its chest is on ribs that are still developing. They’re not as strong or hard as they are in an older child. So a baby sleeping on its back with this on its chest is in danger. The risks are too high, and the stakes are too great for people to put their kids at risk and use these on kids who are younger than a year old.”
Blumenthal said he wants them banned, “but parents can impose their own bans. They can say – not using these kinds of products – ‘I want the sleep myself, I want the rest, but the risks to my baby are too great to put them in danger from these kinds of weighted sleep products.’”
Moriarty introduced her baby, Francis, and said that when she is up late breastfeeding, she sees advertisements from weighted sleep sacks coming up on social media feeds.
“It’s really a detriment,” she said. “A lot of these are still being sold on the internet through third-party applications, as well as through different marketing techniques, such as Instagram and Facebook. And because of that, I think it preys on really sleep-deprived parents.”
After Moriarty spoke, Ziogas said research on SIDS began in 1991 when the medical industry learned that it was dangerous for babies to sleep on their stomach.
“They slept too soundly and often stopped breathing,” Ziogas said. “Through the years, we’ve made more and more recommendations with the studies that we’ve done through the American Academy of Pediatrics. And just a couple of years ago, we realized that weighted sleep sacks were a risk to babies.”
When they have weight on their chest, Ziogas said, it causes resistance on the airway.
“Now that we know that these are a risk for babies, none of us should be recommending weighted sleep sacks for babies. It’s unexplainable to have to go through the grief and despair and loss of losing an infant.”
She said the AAP has a list of safe sleep strategies. More detail is available here.
“It’s on your back, on a firm surface, and nothing in the crib – no bumper pads, no pillows, no loose blankets,” she said. “We want babies to sleep in a situation where they’re not too warm, where they’re not overheated. We want to run a little white noise in the room with the babies. We want them in the room with their parents for the first six months, if not the first year of life.”
She also said that AAP recommends for babies to fall asleep with a pacifier in their mouth, “because the first few moments that you’re falling asleep are the most dangerous for a SIDS event to happen. So we put a pacifier in a baby’s mouth once breastfeeding has been firmly established” because the sucking activity stimulates the brain so that they don’t forget to breathe.
She reiterated that doctors want all new parents “to remove weighted sleep sacks from a baby’s repertoire of safe sleep products that they have in their home. It’s a strong recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and we hope that everybody gets this warning loud and clear.”
Asked how old a child should be before using any weighted sleep products, Ziogas said there is “no reason to put a weighted sleep sack on a baby at any age.”
Swaddle No More Than Two Months
Ziogas said that even an unweighted swaddle can be dangerous if it’s wrapped too tightly around a baby’s chest. She said they should be snug but not tight around a baby’s chest, and she recommends swaddling only for two months.
“A sleep sack or swaddle for a baby helps them in the first few weeks when they’re still used to being in utero, it reminds them about being inside their moms and it’s easier for them to adjust to living in the world that we’re in once they’re out of the uterus to be swaddled in the first few days,” she said, adding that she advises parents to stop swaddling at two months or no later than when they start rolling over.
“I usually tell the parents in my practice by two months of age I don’t really want to swaddle,” she said. “Some of the swaddles constrain the hips and they cause developmental dysplasia of the hips, and we also don’t want their chest compressed.”
Ziogas also offered this advice:
“I tell [new] parents that it’s not the roof over your head, the money in your bank, the food in your stomach or the clothes on your back,” she said. “It’s the sleep under your belt that’s going to make this easy for you this next year, enjoyable and fun. And your pediatrician can help you with other strategies to help your baby sleep.”
Ziogas continued: “But you will never sleep again if you lose a child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and that the weighted sleep sacks have to be taken off the market and everyone has to get the word out that they are not safe for families.”
Nested Bean Responds
“First the gas stoves, and now Senator Blumenthal is attacking Nested Bean’s tested and safe baby products,” Nested Bean CEO Manasi Gangan wrote. “The latest anti-science stance shows that Senator Blumenthal’s press conference serves political goals, not infant health and safety. More than 5,000 of our customers recently signed a petition supporting Nested Bean’s line of infant products and opposing government overreach.”
Gangan said Blumenthal joined CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka “on a crusade that targeted and harmed more than just our small minority woman-owned business. Families and caregivers who rely on products like ours to support sleep and long-term health are being deprived as well.”
Gangan also said that in response, “a Congressional Committee on Small Business recently launched an investigation into Trumka’s actions that targeted small businesses, including ours, without due process, data or science.”
Gangan also said Blumenthal made several false claims during the news conference:
• Our referenced products “contain a total of 1-2 ounces of light filling designed to mimic a parent’s reassuring touch.”
• Nested Bean has sold more than 2.5 million units “with no verified record of injury or fatality. Our products have passed mandatory and voluntary tests under the guidance of safety experts. A preliminary research study has shown that infants’ breathing was not hindered by the gentle pressure applied in our products, and Nested Bean’s exceptional safety record is proof of this.”
• “Our products are not being investigated by the CSPC. The claim is simply not true. In January 2023, the CPSC initiated an extensive four-month evaluation of Nested Bean products for the risk of suffocation or related hazards. The CPSC specifically found no further action was needed under the Consumer Product Safety Act and closed their report in April 2023.”
Gangan said her company firmly opposes “this vague and overbroad legislative bill” that she said is “not rationally related to legitimate government interest of infant safety.”
She also said Nested Bean supports the creation of federal safety standards for weighted infant sleep products.
Dreamland Baby was not immediately available for comment.