New Safety Guidelines Recommended for Nursing Pillows After Infant Deaths

For many breast-or-chest-feeding parents, nursing pillows are a staple in their arsenal of must-haves for finding comfort during long, sometimes arduous, sessions. Nursing pillows wrap around a parent's torso to provide the height needed to comfortably nurse a baby without extra strain on the neck, arm, or back muscles.

Because many nursing sessions end with the baby fast asleep (and the parent utterly exhausted), these pillows have taken on double duty as a napping spot for babies. But parents should think twice about letting them sleep on these pillows, according to the 

CPSC staff is recommending the first federal requirements to make nursing pillows safer and discourage caregivers from setting babies down on the pillows to sleep.1 This comes after an  investigation found more than 160 babies have died in incidents associated with nursing pillows since 2007.

The CPSC's reports 154 infant deaths associated with nursing pillows between 2010 and 2022. Nearly all of those deaths were babies under the age of 6 months. Sadly the official causes of death were reported as asphyxia, suffocation, overlay, sudden unexpected infant death (SUID), sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), or a similar cause.1