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Caring for a newborn can be a difficult and highly stressful task. New parents are constantly focused on how to keep their infants healthy, using techniques and practices recommended by medical professionals and family. In 1992, one of these techniques that was promoted through an education campaign involved informing parents to get their babies to sleep on their backs. This position was responsible for lowering a baby's risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) by 50 percent. Even though this position was touted for years, a new report discovered that having an infant sleep on his/her back during the first few months of life could lead to the flattening of the infant's head, a condition known as positional plagiocephaly.

In previous studies, researchers calculated that anywhere from as little as three percent all the way up to 61 percent of infants suffer from a misshapen head. Now, in this new study, researchers were able to find a more exact rate of positional plagiocephaly. This study, with lead author, Aliyah Mawji, an assistant professor of nursing from Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, recruited a large sample size of 440 healthy infants from the ages of seven to 12 weeks. The results found that 47 percent of them had some form of flattening on their heads.

Of this percentage, which accounted for 205 infants, 78 percent were considered to have a mild form of the condition. 19 percent were classified as moderate and three percent were considered severe. The majority of the infants, which made up 63 percent, had an afflicted right side of the head. The American Academy of Pediatrics reported in 2011 that positional plagiocephlay is usually benign and reversible. This condition could be fixed via physical therapy and other non-invasive techniques.

Since SIDS is a lot more serious than positional plagiocephaly, parents are not advised to avoid the back sleeping position. Instead some recommendations include teaching the baby to rest on both sides of the head while they are on their backs so that they do not constantly sleep on one side, more commonly the right side, avoiding car seats, carries and bouncers when possible if the infant is awake, and moving the crib around in a room, which encourages the infant to look for the door, window and toys in different directions.

The report was published in Pediatrics.