Ta Lucy

I wanted to add that one of the factors not taken into account in the later-vaccine SIDS decrease in Japan is that during that time every single mother was told WHY the vaccines were being given later (they though it might contribute to various things which is why they changed policy). This amounts to a massive, NATIONAL increase in awareness of SIDS and the contributing risk-factors for SIDS. That alone could have been responsible for the drop in SIDS incidence in the same way as it dropped suddenly in the UK when Anne Diamond, a morning tv presenter in the UK lost her child Sebastian to SIDS in 1991 and the tv company she worked for started a massive national drive (Back To Sleep Campaign) to raise awareness. SIDS dropped from 2000 cases a year to just 200. Back To Sleep remains the UK's most successful health campaign in the UK to date. Knowledge is power. Again, the studies do not look at such factors because how much an individual already knew, learned from the campaign and implemented in reality is pretty much impossible to measure.

Some babies are more prone to flat heads and yes, it's far more common in babies who spend long periods of time in bouncers or on the floor or in a cot, and aren't much handled. Normal parenting will avoid most cases and where it doesn't the child would almost certainly have gotten it anyway. MOst babies grow out of it (how many adults do you know with flat heads?) and for a very few who won't a helmet can be used for a few months to rectify the problem. Another worry forced on us by hyped-up media "medics"...

B