A Texas children’s hospital says it has noticed an uptick in the number of infant sleep deaths in the past 15 months, and it is educating parents about unsafe sleep practices.

Cook Children’s Medical Center reports 30 infant deaths linked to unsafe sleep situations since January 2022, mostly as a result of the baby co-sleeping with at least one parent or caregiver.

Other deaths have been tied to babies being placed on a pillow with a propped bottle; in a crib with a blanket or pillow; in a recliner; on a couch next to a sleeping adult; or wearing a loose T-shirt covering their face.

By the time these tots arrived at the Fort Worth hospital, they were already in cardiac arrest or respiratory failure.

“Unless it hits home, it doesn’t really resonate. We want [parents] to understand this is a very preventable situation,” Candle Johnson, an advanced practice registered nurse at Cook Children’s Renaissance Neighborhood Clinic, said in a statement.

“Let’s be proactive today, so we don’t have to be reactive tomorrow. If a fatality happens, then how do we go forward when we could have prevented it from the beginning?” she added.

Cook Children’s recommends always placing babies on their back when going to sleep, as it’s unsafe for them to sleep on their sides or stomach if they can’t roll over.

Babies should sleep on a mattress that is flat and firm with tightly-fitted sheets. There should be no blankets, pillows, soft toys, or bumper pads in the child’s sleep area, as these have been shown to be hazardous.

Parents should not sleep in the same bed with their baby, and instead of swaddling, the medical center encourages using a sleep sack.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are, on average, 3,400 sudden unexpected infant deaths each year in the US. About 27% of these deaths are attributed to accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed.

Socio-economic factors often come into play, as some parents can’t afford a crib, or they live in a crowded household, so they co-sleep with their baby. Cook Children’s noted the group with the highest unsafe sleep deaths were black boys 2 to 6 months old.

Sharon Evans, a Cook Children’s trauma prevention coordinator, said these past 15 months represent a peak of unsafe sleep deaths that she had not seen since she started her role at the hospital in 2008.

Dr. Daniel Guzman, who works in Cook Children’s emergency department, cautioned parents against thinking this could never happen to them.

“You always hear, ‘I never thought it was going to happen to me.’ The amount of pain that you see these families go through is just horrific,” he said in a statement. “It hurts me every single time.”

Guidelines for safe sleeping practices have evolved over the years.

Just recently, the Food and Drug Administration warned parents that head shaping pillows can create an unsafe sleep environment for infants by contributing to the risk of suffocation and death.