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LORNA BENSON: There's a strong belief that many of Minnesota's 60 to 90 sudden infant deaths each year are preventable. Investigators are now learning that unsafe sleeping arrangements are fairly common with these deaths. In particular, they've discovered many situations where parents and babies co-sleep or bed share.

Dakota County Medical examiner, Lindsay Thomas, has suspected this for years based on what she's seen in her morgue and from what she's gleaned by reviewing every infant death in the state since 2005.

LINDSAY THOMAS: I have been personally so persuaded by the evidence that suggests that these infant deaths are largely due to unsafe sleep environment. I really want to get the message out.

LORNA BENSON: Thomas found that, in 2005, more than 3/4 of the state's 62 sudden infant deaths were associated with unsafe sleep environments. That link was even more dramatic the following year, when 92% of the 57 cases had at least one hazardous sleeping condition present at death.

Her numbers aren't ready yet for 2007 and 2008, but Thomas says a preliminary review shows that most of the cases involved a dangerous sleeping situation, and bed sharing was often a factor.

SIDS is still thought to be responsible for at least some of the deaths. In fact, it's possible that in all of the cases, there was some sort of developmental problem that made the babies more vulnerable to dying during sleep, whether they succumbed to SIDS or to the hazards of an unsafe bed.

PATRICK CAROLAN: It doesn't take much to obstruct the airflow in an infant's nose and mouth or to change that, to alter that.

LORNA BENSON: Dr. Patrick Carolan is the Medical Director for the Minnesota SIDS Center at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. He says deep brain autopsies have shown slight differences between babies who die suddenly in their sleep and babies who die from other causes.

PATRICK CAROLAN: For most babies, it may not be an issue because they have the ability to defend their airway, meaning they can turn, redirect their airway, take a breath of fresh air and compensate. But babies that are vulnerable to SIDS may not have those same finely tuned defense mechanisms.

LORNA BENSON: In other words, some infant brains may not get the message that the oxygen supply is too low. Or if they do get the message, they may not be able to react to it. The challenge is that researchers don't know which babies may harbor these vulnerabilities and which ones don't.

So they recommend that parents remove anything from a baby's bed that might impede breathing, like sleep surfaces that are too soft or fluffy blankets, loose sheets, bumper pads and toys. Those objects can entrap an infant and suffocate them.

But the idea that it could be unsafe for adults and even siblings to sleep with babies isn't as well-understood. And the theory doesn't sit well with some parents.

LISA PARKER: I think that there may be some assumptions being made.

LORNA BENSON: Lisa Parker is co-founder of Attachment Parenting International, a group that believes in the attachment theory that babies need to be physically close to their parents much of the time to develop emotionally. Parker says investigators usually can't provide much more than circumstantial evidence to support their bed sharing warnings.

LISA PARKER: When a child dies in a crib, it's automatically assumed to be a SIDS death. When a child dies in a parent's bed, it's often assumed to be a suffocation or overlying on the infant. Or the sometimes the parent thinks they must have, but they don't really know. They just assume, well, I must have rolled over on the infant.

LORNA BENSON: Parker acknowledges that there might be a slight risk to bed sharing, but she says it's worth it because that early, close contact helps babies grow into well-adjusted people. She says as long as parents aren't obese, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, or deep sleepers, bed sharing can be done safely.

LISA PARKER: The baby's senses are stimulated during the bed sharing experiences. There's a cascade of sensory exchanges that go on between the mother and the baby through the night. And the baby can smell the mother, it can smell the mother's milk, can feel the warmth of her body.

LORNA BENSON: In fact, bed sharing is believed to promote higher rates of breastfeeding, something public health officials encourage. But there have been some cases when bed sharing clearly resulted in an infant's death and the situations didn't involve alcohol or an obese parent.

Lisa West was a 20-year-old mother who had never heard any warnings about sleeping with her baby. In fact, her pediatrician recommended it as a way to bond with her son. That was six years ago.

This January, the 26-year-old decided to share the story of how her four-month-old died. West put together a video of still photographs of her son set to music and posted it on the internet.

SPEAKER: (SINGING) Glory, baby slipped away as fast as we could say, baby. Baby.

LISA WEST: He was wonderful. He barely ever cried only when he was hungry. And he was just a go with the flow kind of baby.

LORNA BENSON: On the night Dayton died, West and her family were staying with relatives. She and her husband shared a bed with Dayton, just like they did at home. Around 2:00 AM, the baby woke up hungry for his bottle.

LISA WEST: He stayed awake for about half an hour after his bottle, just staring so intensely at me and just cooing and smiling, and then we went to sleep.

LORNA BENSON: Around a 7:45 the next morning, she was startled out of a deep sleep.

LISA WEST: My mother-in-law was screaming that I was laying on top of the baby, and I turned him over and his lips were blue. And I just immediately started doing CPR. And my mother-in-law called the ambulance and my husband was just screaming, what did you do? What did you do? Because just the initial shock of it all.

And I ran him out to the ambulance, and then I went to the hospital. And I don't know what they said, I don't know how they told us that he was dead, but they came in and obviously said that they couldn't help him.

LORNA BENSON: West hasn't talked much about her child's death, but now she has decided to share her story publicly.

LISA WEST: I just feel like I don't have a choice. Like, I have to do that because in doing that, it's the only way I see fit to honor my son. And maybe one day when I go to heaven, he'll say, you did a really good job, mommy. And look at all these babies that you saved. And maybe he won't be mad at me.

LORNA BENSON: West has been invited to testify before Congress on behalf of a bill that's expected to be introduced soon that would create a national database to track unexpected infant deaths.

Dr. Lindsey Thomas, Dakota county's medical examiner, says a national database could help investigators finally get to the bottom of what's causing many of these deaths.

She likens the situation to the debate over seat belts. When she was growing up, almost no one wore a seat belt. But today, Thomas says parents wouldn't dream of putting their kid in a car without a car seat because the data proves that it's safer.

LINDSAY THOMAS: I think it's part of our evolving view of how much safer do we want our children to be than we were. And what we didn't know then did hurt us. In fact, people did die because they weren't wearing their belt. And likewise, I think babies did die in unsafe sleep environments and now we recognize that in a way that we didn't.

LORNA BENSON: But until the science proves the risks beyond a doubt, many parents are left with sorting out the mixed messages on their own. Lorna Benson, Minnesota Public Radio News.