The danger in your DMs: Who exactly is putting your baby to sleep?

The danger in your DMs: Who exactly is putting your baby to sleep...The BBC just went undercover into the world of sleep consultants. What they found should scare you — and the system that created the problem should scare you even more.

I want to write this from two places at once, which feels really uncomfortable, but that's where I live. First: as a mum who gets it, who works with new mums every day who have stared at the ceiling at 3am wondering what the hell is wrong and why nobody told them any of this. And second: as a Paediatric Nurse, IBCLC and Sleep Consultant who has watched what happens when the wrong information gets into exhausted, desperate hands. All of these things are connected, which is what I say to parents, and now i'm going to say to whoever is reading this.

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Part one - the system that gets you there.

Let's start with what the BBC sleep investigation is actually about, because the outrage cycle will collapse it into something simpler than it actually is. Undercover reporters consulted self-described baby sleep experts and were told — by one who identified herself as a former midwife with, in her own words, "no qualification that anyone could have for what I do" — that they should place their newborn on their front to sleep. She called back-sleeping, and I want you to think about this really carefully, "one of the biggest travesties of modern-day parenting." Never mind all the evidence based research and the 'Back to sleep' campaign that hugely prevented many infant deats. We can't (and shouldn't) argue with evidence.

A high-follower Sleep Consultant— who has appeared on ITV's This Morning, has a Penguin Random House book to her name, and counts celebrity parents among her endorsers — told the BBC that every baby she works with sleeps on its front. She is no longer a registered midwife, which means there is no regulatory body that can stop her from saying this to you, as she has no governing body to be accountable to. Sleep consulting is entirely unregulated.

NHS paediatrician Dr Lillie Parker reviewed the footage and said: "This is fundamentally the most dangerous thing she has said. We're not talking about mild harm here."

A second consultant, was found advising parents to place muslins and towels inside the cot. The Lullaby Trust lists loose items in a cot as a direct risk factor for SIDS, but she has stated that in 25 years she has "very successfully advised thousands of parents, all over the world." That's as may be, but your advice is dangerous. And, as a sleep consultant- it is our literal JOB to give parents the latest, most up to date, evidence based guidance so that they can make their own informed decisions about their child's care.

Now, before we immediately start influencer-bashing, let's think about why people are turning to people on the internet with big followings giving unsafe advice? why are they so desperately, achingly alone at 3am in the first place? Because that's the easy version of the story, to slate and witch hunt the influencers, but it's not the full picture. I'll also add that while I know many, excellent influencers out there, sadly, the two named by the BBC investigation are not the only ones giving, quite literally, life endangering guidance to parents.

24% of new mothers in the UK reported having no regular access to NHS staff in the weeks and months following birth, according to a National Childbirth Trust survey of 2,000 parents. Nearly a quarter, which could just be the first answer to that question.

The NCT called the UK's postnatal care system "dangerously underfunded and understaffed." The Care Quality Commission — the body that's meant to reassure us — inspected 131 maternity locations and rated nearly half of them as requiring improvement or inadequate. In 2023, England was short of 2,500 midwives. Maternal mortality in the UK rose to its highest rate since 2003-05 and we ranked second-highest among eight comparable high-income European countries.

This isn't a 'niche' crisis, it's a public health emergency that we have collectively decided to treat as a lifestyle problem, by blaming the influencers.

So what happens when a new mother is discharged — sometimes within 6 hours of birth (NICU Nurses HATE those 6hr discharges for a reason!)— into a world where the GP appointment is three weeks away (if they can get one), the Health Visitor is massively overwhelmed because they're basically a Social Worker with high safeguarding cases, and the NCT group WhatsApp is full of conflicting opinions from people who are equally lost and don't have a clue? She opens Instagram and she finds a woman who looks calm and authoritative, who promises sleep in five days (immediate red flag if you're not interested in cry it out based methods), who replies to her DMs, who for £450 will come to her house and make it ALL STOP. The Mum of course pays, who wouldn't in a sleep deprived. befuddled state....if you can afford it, it's a bargain!

"No parent should ever have to question whether the person they have trusted to care for their baby is truly qualified." — a family affected by unsafe sleep advice, speaking to the BBC. That quote makes me want to cry. and it makes me furious— not because it's not true, but because it is exactly what most Mothers have thought at some point. Every parent should be able to assume that the person that they are entrusting to help them to care for their child is qualified, but the system has failed so comprehensively that they can't. And when we point the finger only at the unregulated sleep consultants, we let the system off the hook again.

Postnatal care is the aspect of maternity care with which women in England are least satisfied — this is not my opinion (and it is actually my opinion, having worked in and had a baby in the system), it is documented repeatedly in surveys and research. Staff don't have time to offer meaningful support and information about baby care is woefully inadequate. Feeding support is incredibly inconsistent, a complete postcode lottery. And so we hand new parents a leaflet, discharge them into the dark, and then act completely appalled when they Google their way to someone who will actually pick up the phone and 'advise' them...

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Part two - the bit where I have to say the clinical part out loud.

I am a nurse. I am an IBCLC — an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, which requires examination, clinical hours, and ongoing recertification. I run antenatal classes, I run many classes for families and I actually care about this, which is why I won't soften what I think. I'm also a sleep consultant.

Telling a parent to place their newborn on its front to sleep is not a 'different approach'. It isn't a grey area and it is not about finding what works for your individual baby. It is dangerous. It can kill babies.

To put it into clinical context, the Back to Sleep campaign launched in 1991 — championed by The Lullaby Trust and journalist Anne Diamond, who had lost her son to SIDS that same year. In the years before it, more than 1,000 babies a year were dying unexpectedly in England and Wales. In the first 25 years after the campaign, that figure fell by 81% and in 2022, the UK recorded 171 unexplained sudden unexpected deaths in infancy (SUDI). Unsafe sleeping arrangements were identified as a modifiable risk factor in 72% of those deaths. Seventy-two per cent. These are not statistics about unlikely fringe cases, these are about choices that are happening in living rooms and bedrooms, every.single.night.

I have carried the Paediatric Emergency pager too often when I worked clinically. I have seen the devastation this causes in families. i have been present too many times at end-of-life conversations, and I will never forget the sounds that come from families when they realise their child has died. The death of a baby is something that many families don't survive, and cannot come back from. Especially when it 'may' have been preventable. The blame, the guilt and the 'what-ifs' never go away.

The NHS guidance is clear, consistent, and evidence-based: always place your baby on their back to sleep, in their own sleep space, on a firm flat mattress, with nothing loose in the cot, for the first year of life. It's not that hard a sentence to say. Even with reflux — and this is so important, because reflux is often used as the justification for front-sleeping — the safest position for all babies, including those with reflux, is supine, which means on their back. Every.single.time. I know it's hard, but it has to be. And accidentally falling asleep on the sofa with your baby on you is completely different to following advice given to you by an uninformed, dangerous 'professional'. Because terrifyingly, it isn't just the Sleep Consultants & the parenting influencers. It's your 'old school' doctor. It's your Nurse or Health Visitor who hasn't kept themselves up to date. It's your NICU nurse who only ever deals with babies hooked up to monitors, so doesn't even think to tell you not to put your baby on their tummy to sleep when you go home.

The Lullaby Trust is also explicit that there is no evidence breathing monitors or movement sensors reduce the risk of SIDS. this is important, because often, it's what people use to justify their advice... 'Oh, we had an apnoea mat, a special sock, whatever', so it told us if something was wrong so we didn't need to worry. These are frequently sold or recommended alongside unsafe sleep positioning, as a kind of permission slip, as if the monitor makes the dangerous thing safe. It doesn't.

What concerns me most, from a clinical perspective, is not just the front-sleeping advice, it's the confidence with which it's delivered, and the credentials that appear to support it. A former midwife (even a lapsed one) carries enormous implicit knowledge and authority. A book published by a major publishing house implies editorial vetting (and it probably was, but by someone who doesn't have a clue about safe sleep). A celebrity endorsement implies trustworthiness to many people. None of these things mean the advice is safe and parents have no reliable way to know that, and that isn't their fault. That is a regulatory failure, not a parenting one.

Loose items in the cot (muslins, rolled towels, positioners, nest-style pods) are another area where the influencer aesthetic and clinical safety are in complete and utter conflict. Every time I see a picture of the desired aesthetic of the curated nursery on Instagram involving softness, coziness, beautiful layers I lose my mind. I have called out a few people in my time over this. Politely, because education is better than shame. Safe sleep looks different. It looks stark, boring, not 'cute'. It's a firm, flat, bare mattress with a baby in a sleep bag lying flat. It doesn't make cute photo's or social media post, it doesn't feel like the warm, comforting thing you imagined when you were pregnant. But the data on what happens when babies become trapped against soft objects, or overheat, or cannot reposition themselves — that data is not ambiguous. Also, please don't say to me 'but they wouldn't sell it if it wasn't safe'. 'They'? The multi-national corporations who have shareholders to please and money to make? Let's think logically about that for a moment, because the answer is in the question.

An 81% reduction in SIDS deaths in the first 25 years following the Back to Sleep campaign. This is one of the most significant & successful public health successes in modern UK history. We should not be casually dismantling it in paid consultations with people that you have turned to out of desperation.

The risk is also not the same across the board. The Lullaby Trust notes that the danger is particularly high for babies who are usually placed on their back but are sometimes placed on their front or side. So the parents who are following safe sleep guidance 90% of the time, but who hear a very compelling, authoritative, confident, seemingly-qualified person tell them that front-sleeping is fine for a baby who 'just can't settle' , those are the parents at huge risk.

So should we license baby sleep consultants in the UK? Yes. But what would that actually need to look like.

The government has indicated plans to restrict the use of the term "nurse" to those with appropriate qualifications (hallelujah!) which is a start, and very long overdue. But the sleep consultant space is wider and more complicated than protecting a job title, it's international for a start.

Anyone can currently throw up a website, call themselves a sleep coach, charge £300 to £600 for a package, and advise a family with a newborn. There's no DBS check required, no license, no first aid, no insurance and no understanding of infant physiology, safe sleep guidelines, developmental stages, or feeding relationships. No requirement to know when something is beyond their scope and needs a medical referral, and the "certification" courses that do exist — weekend trainings, online modules — are not regulated qualifications. They are not on the Register of Regulated Qualifications, but they carry the weight of whatever credibility the issuing body has managed to accumulate, which varies hugely.

What regulation that actually means something would actually require.

• Mandatory training that includes evidence-based safe sleep — specifically the Back to Sleep guidance, SIDS risk factors, and the current state of research — as a non-negotiable core, not an optional add-on
• Demonstrated understanding of infant development, feeding (including the relationship between feeding and sleep, which is significant and far too often misunderstood), and when symptoms require actual medical referral rather than just a sleep plan
• A regulatory body with proper teeth and powers — the ability to investigate complaints, remove practitioners from a register, and publish findings. It's NOT about blame. It's about accountability and baby safety.
• Mandatory DBS checks and professional indemnity insurance before any paid consultation with families
• Clear scope-of-practice boundaries: sleep consultants who are not healthcare professionals cannot and should not be advising on reflux management, feeding difficulties, or anything that requires clinical assessment, especially in online consultations
• Prohibition on advice that directly contradicts NHS guidance, with a clear appeals process, consequences and systems in place to protect families
• Transparency about qualifications: what it is, who issued it, what it covers, and what it doesn't — displayed clearly, not buried in the Ts & Cs somewhere

Do i think this would fix everything? No, but it's at least a start. I know it wouldn't- I'm an IBCLC and we have a governing body, and there are still non qualified people out there doing the role of an IBCLC, pretending to make money. Regulation is a floor, not a ceiling. There are excellent sleep practitioners operating with bucketloads of integrity who already do all of this and more — who refer when they should, who know the research, who would never advise a parent to put a newborn on its front and who stay within their scope of practice. They want regulation too, because right now they are competing in a market where anyone can claim the same status they've spent years earning the privilege to know what they're doing. A register would help parents to find them. A regulatory body would give those practitioners somewhere to report the ones who are causing harm, and to feel pride in what they've achieved. Because, for the good ones, it's not all about the money, it's about keeping babies safe, and families together.

But regulation alone, without addressing the void that the unqualified social media fills, will just push dangerous advice underground, to WhatsApp threads and private Telegram groups and subscription communities where no regulator can reach it. If we want parents to trust regulated practitioners, we have to make regulated support actually accessible to them. That means postnatal care that doesn't end at six weeks, because the postnatal period in a woman's life sure as hell doesn't. It means health visitors who have time, not a caseload full of child abuse victims. It means GPs who can discuss sleep without a ten-minute clock ticking overhead, worrying about getting the next patient in to meet targets. It means acknowledging that sleep deprivation in new parents is a public health issue, not a personal failing to be solved by whoever charges the least on Instagram, or if you can't afford it, suck it up and get on with it. And, (I say this as a sleep consultant), there are other ways to support new families without automatically turning to sleep training.

The BBC investigation is important because it is also a symptom of something we keep not wanting to pay for. so we pass that cost on. And it's not monetary, it's quite literally life and death.

I sadly don't have a neat ending for this, because the system is broken and the consultants are dangerous and the parents are exhausted and the babies are the ones without a voice (as always) in any of it. We can be angry at the right targets, and those targets do include the sleep consultants who KNOWINGLY contradict thirty years of life-saving public health research. We can also be angry at the system that made parents so desperate they had nowhere else to turn. Maybe it's time we got really angry, if that's what will make an impact on meaningful change.

The Back to Sleep campaign has saved an estimated 30,000 babies' lives since 1991, and that didn't happen by accident, it happened because someone decided that infant deaths were preventable and worth preventing, loudly, over decades. We owe it to those families, and to every family who ever uses a sleep consultant, to remember those babies that made this campaign a need.

Safe sleep guidance: always back, always cot, always clear.

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